Category: Robots

“WowWee” is right. These people are cranking out bots in nearly every form-factor and type of robot motility. The latest bot that they demo’d at CES is the RoboBOA, a snakebot. Robert Oschler of RobotsRule sent us a link to a video and a discussion forum, which includes an exchange with WowWee’s chief bot-builder Mark Tilden in which he reveals the following:

The RoboBOA is, in fact, a lot of robot. Using a new adaptive vision system it can track and see objects up to 4 meters away with precision, and it doesn’t just avoid them, it can take an interest. Motion is quick using its tail travel wheel, and it can raise itself almost a meter into the air during turns and demos. The default personality is very ET friendly, and it’s stuffed with other personalities like patrol guard, rotating lazer sentry, even a strafing guard mode. There are 41 functions including volume control, tracking flashlight, explore, and it’s even an iPod speaker amplifier.

Thanks, Robert!

Ed Paradis has instructions on his site for how to deconstruct the Hot Wheels Radar Gun “toy” (which is a real, working device) to use the radar module in your own circuits, such as for obstacle detection in robotics. You can get the Hot Wheels gun for around US$20.

Since the robot community has been busy hacking and modding the Roomba anyway, iRobot decided to go with the flow and offer a robotics development platform built around the Roomba formfactor. Robot Magazine has an Introduction and First Look. Here’s the juicy bits from the piece:

The iRobot Create comes fully assembled. It has 32 built-in sensors, two powered wheels, a castor (and optional 4th castor wheel), 10 pre-programmed behaviors, an expandable input/ouput port for custom sensors and actuators, a cargo bay with mounting points and a tailgate for ballast. This new bot platform works with optional accessories such as the iRobot Command Module, iRobot Roomba Virtual Wall units, the self-charging home base, and iRobot Roomba standard remote. You can use the Roomba rechargeable battery options or standard alkaline batteries. You’ll need a computer with a serial port (USB connectivity is expected soon) and Microsoft Windows XP, Linux or Mac OS X.

The First Look piece on Robot Magazine’s site includes some pics of the Create turned into a laundry picker-upper, a store barker, and laser tag robots. Cool!

The Create starts at US$130 for a barebones unit and goes up to $230 for a full kit with Command Module, self-charging station, and two virtual walls. Here’s the iRobot Create page.

Robert Oschler of Robots Rule tells Street Tech:

WowWee is showing their new spider robot at this month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This may be the bot that was rumored to be codenamed Spidersapien. Its actual name is the Roboquad, a fast moving four legged robot with advanced object assessment and detection circuitry. Built to move rapidly in any direction and react quickly to motion in its environment, it’s slated to hit store shelves in Fall of 2007. Nocturnal, the clever Evosapien Team expert that created the sinister Robosapien + Teddy Bear creation named RoboTed, has created a fun video showing his idea of what the Roboquad/Spidersapien should have been.

You can discuss this new robot, or Nocturnal’s vid, at the Roboquad forum.

Simon Fraser is a programmer who works at Apple, on the Quicktime Apps Team. His very well put together BEAM robot site has some very cool builds, including this Solarroller which uses flexible solar paneling to power the bot. For the power circuit, it uses the Miller Solar Engine I discussed in my BEAM articles in Vol. 6 of MAKE.

[Via Solarbotics]

EEBeat has a short interview with BEAM and Robosapien inventor Mark Tilden. Some interesting tidbits in the piece, like how Mark engineered the RS2 by cannibalizing the RS1 and using his analog “nervous net” technology, but then “setting these patterns in digital silicon for reliability.” He and WowWee also custom-designed the motors and gearboxes “pushing the concept of ‘toygrade’ to the limits while still keeping costs low.” (If you read Rodney Brooks’s Flesh and Machines — where he talks about trying to bring his iRobot Real Baby to market and how insane the margins are on toys, with parts needing to cost less than nothing — you can appreciate what level of innovation needs to go into something like a Robosapien or Roboreptile to keep them within toy price ranges.)

Another day, another Wii controller app, and another Roomba hack. Here, a guy has used the DarwinRemote software to capture the accelerometer data from the Wiimote and the Perl version of the Roomba control software to be able to control Roomba via the Wii controller (and via a PC and via Bluetooth).

I missed this Michael Kanellos piece on CNet (from Oct) about living with a Scooba, the iRobot cleaning bot that both vacuums and washes floors. I’ve seen lots of people faun over it, how cool the concept of an affordable robot that can clean the horror that is the bathroom floor — okay, MY bathroom floor, anyway — but I’ve seen little about how it actually works in the wild. With the Roomba, I waited several gens to get one ’cause I heard that earlier versions were less-than-reliable. I suspected the same was true for Scooba, and this review bears that out. The main cons seem to be that it’s very noisy and it leaves a watery film on wood floors that needs to be wiped up or it could damage the floor.

The posting of the T3 video showing the forthcoming WowWee Flytech Dragonfly — an R/C robo-dragonfly that actually uses its beating wings to stay aloft — created quite a stir in the geeksophere. The wireheads over at Robots Rule wrote to tell us that the WowWee Dragonfly was actually based on a rubber- band- powered Ornithopter designed by a high school student, Sean Frawley, and that he’s now a consultant to WowWee. Robots Rule has a page dedicated to the Flytech Dragonfly and a discussion forum. The Flytech page points to Sean’s Ornithopter Technologies website where you can buy a US$20 kit to build your own paper/ balsa/ rubber band flyer (shown above). Cool!

BTW: The Robots Rule Flytech page has a second video of the Dragonfly. This one looks like it was shot in WowWee’s offices.

We’re not on Solarbotics’s payroll, we swear! It’s just that they’re releasing some cool year-end stuff. First the Mousey kit and now this. It’s a 37 x 33mm Polycrystalline 6.7v Solar Cell that has a Miller Solar Engine circuit etched onto the underside. All you have to do is solder on a few components, wire up a motor and you have a solar-powered thingamajig.

I talked about the Miller Solar Engine variant (a more power-efficient, more configurable version of the traditional Type 1 voltage-triggered Solarengine) in my BEAM articles in MAKE. You could use one of these cells and its MSE circuit with a Gold Cap (.33F capacitor) on my Solarroller project from Make Vol. 6 and you’d get a nice long-burst power feed to the motor for a decent run of the Roller.

These Solar Engine Cells are a “Limited Edition” (oh, fancy…), so you should scoop ’em up while you can. And they’re only US$9 for one or $7.25 for two or more.