Category: Robots

While doing research for another article on robots (top secret, very hush, hush), I’ve been looking at the BEAM robotics taxonomy. Taking cues from biology as it does (putting the “B” in BEAM), one fascinating area of this approach to robotics is the robotic plant-form. One of these types of devices, part bio-mech, part objet d’art, is the Pummer. This BEAM “plant” uses a “solarengine” circuit, found on many BEAMbots, to soak up rays all day and then throb (or “pum”) a light beacon at night. A nifty DIY object to have decorating your “geekosphere,” and a good way to freak out the night cleaning and security crews.

The Pummer seen here is from Brett Hemes’s site, The Breadboard. His Pummer page details the construction of two Pummers. Solarbotics offers plans for a simple Pummer using their awesome BEAM Experimenter PCB, but you can also easily freeform the circuit.

Sorry if I’m boring you non-bot enthusiasts, but I happened upon another BEAM-type robot that’s built around a computer mouse case. Called Mouser, this photovore (light-seeker) uses the Solarbotics BareBones Photovore (BBPV) circuit, probably the simplest robot sensor/brain/actuator chain possible. It’s basically little more than two photodiodes, a 74AC240 signal inverter chip, and two Solarbotics gear motors. Those are the photodiodes peeking out of the wheel wells in front of the motor casings.

It was a thrill for me to see the drawing of Randy Sargent’s Herbie the robot in the illustration to my Mousey the Junkbot article in Make No. 2. I’ve seen other people’s bots that utilize the ingenious Herbie circuit, but I’d never seen Sargent’s original design. While poking around on Solarbotics.net, I found this photovore, built by Grant McKee, that follows Sargent’s original construction.

Click on the image to see a larger version. Another view can be seen on Grant’s Photovore BEAM page.

In my robot book, I talked about a type of robot you can’t see, or at least, it’s not something you would think of as a robot, but it meets the critera that most people would ascribe to a robot: it has sensors, a way of processing the sensor input, and actuators, a way of doing something in the real world in response to the sensing. Here’s a nifty, novelty example: A surfer d00d has built a Web-wired pillow that vibrates in response to wave action. Big waves mean big vibes, small waves, milder vibrations, and bad surf conditions mean no vibrations at all. The data, grabbed via the Web, comes from sensors on wave buoys.

How freakin’ cool is this, a snakebot that has tank treads on every segment, on all four sides. I wonder how well this scheme really works. SEEMS like a brilliant idea, but tread-based motility can be problematic and this baby has a LOT of tread. You’ll notice (from the text) that it’s also a tethered bot, which makes sense cause it probably sucks up LOTS o’ power.

Elektro, the Westinghouse “robot” that made its debut at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, has been getting some press lately. He’s back from the scrapheap of history, thanks to Jack Weeks, son of one of Elektro’s creators, who bought him for $500. Refurbished, Elektro is now drawing crowds at the Mansfield Memorial Museum in Ohio. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against Elektro — in fact, I think he’s pretty freakin’ cool. He could smoke cigarettes. Gotta love robots that smoke! But where I do take umbrage is the continued assertion that Elektro was a “true” robot, and the first robot in the US. Elektro was certainly an impressive and innovative machine, but he was really little more than an animatronic puppet. He had an operator off-stage that controlled him.

Now, as I described in my robot book, things can quickly get ugly and argumentative when you’re trying to define what constitutes a “true” robot, but I would assume that anyone, given the choice between an autonomous, self-charging machine and a remote-controlled one with no brains to speak of, would say that the device with autonomy was the real robot. In which case, THIS is one of the first real robots. Not made in the US, built in Britain in 1948/49, but by an American, W. Grey Walter. If you want to know more about Elektro, check out these pages, which include some details of the mechanics. More cool pics of Walter’s REAL robots here.

As long as I’ve been meddling in hobby robotics, the holy grail of the field has been to build a robot that can go to the fridge to fetch beer. This turns out to be a lot harder than it might at first appear. Thinking “outside the bot,” as it were, a couple of University of Florida students came up with a novel idea: bring the entire fridge to your lazy ass on the couch.

Coolio is a mini-fridge on a mission: to bring sodas and snacks (yeah, right) to the students and profs of Benton Hall. Enter a request via Coolio’s Web page and he finds his way to your room, using IR and ultrasonic range-finding and vision processing. Besides the idea of bringing the mountain to Mohammad, Coolio sports some other nifty features, such as an LCD screen for a face that allows him to have expressions and his ability to self-charge. We’re sorry guys, but as cool as Coolio is, the dreadlocks and tam hat have GOT to go. Seriously.

See my two Robosapien robots, Chrome and Dome, rap, dance, and argue with each other in time to music with the help of their dog Crappy, in a short two minute robot movie.

[Editor’s Note: Involves robot urination (who knew) and the defecation of batteries]

PC Magazine has an article, with some photos, of the next generation of Mark Tilden’s Robosapien line of ‘bots. Besides a new, improved ‘Sapien, Wow Wee is adding a robopet, a la AIBO, and a Roboraptor.

Pretty freaky. I can’t wait!

If you’re more excited by robots than latte makers, you’ll find this review of the Robosapien pretty interesting. While we here at StreetTech haven’t got our hands on one of them yet, we were expecting it to be the best toy ever created. And after reading the review, we expect it to be the best toy ever. Start saving now — only $100 gets you one, but when you see them dancing a chorus line, you’ll want a whole gang of them.

Story submitted by Jason.