Hobbyist One-Ups Sandia Labs

An anonymous reader writes "A robotics hobbyist has created what he claims is the world's smallest autonomous robot. The robot is half the volume of the robots produced by Sandia National Labs in 2001, moves quite a bit faster, and was made using techniques and supplies accessible to anyone." While Sandia Labs has had some time to improve on their original designs, it's still pretty cool to see what one can do at home as well.

Yeah, robots are cool and all....

[Channard]

.. but colour me impressed when someone comes up with one which can handle stairs. And if anyone's thinking of mentioning Asimo, I present Exhibit A [youtube.com]

No more pointless than most things

[EmbeddedJanitor]

I teach electronics to a bunch of kids and use autonomous robotics as a vehicle for this.

Kids really enjoy problem solving for things that move. This creates a great learning environment.

Even plain old bump-and-turn robots have some very interesting control problems, like getting trapped. THis really helps people extend their problem solving skills.

I also work in real-world robotics (big multi-ton mothers).Sure we use simulations for developing control ideas, but those are pretty limited. You can test out various theories, but simulation only takes you so far. You need the real thing to get the dynamcs correct. For some real fun you want to see a huge robot go out of control.

Some of the most interesting research in robotics is being done at the hobbiest level. Lejos http://lejos.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] has some very interesting abstractions and models for defining and controlling behaviour. Then there's also http://www.seattlerobotics.org/ [seattlerobotics.org]

Cool, but..

[Asmandeus]

From the article:

Some people have also pointed out a cool little nano-tech inch-worm from Dartmouth that moves along a mesh of wires. Do I even have to defend pico's place here? "...it reacts to electric changes in the grid of electrodes it moves on. This grid also supplies the microrobot with the power needed to make these movements." While I'm impressed with the (incredibly) micro-bot, it still can't carry around its own juice. I can't compete at a nano-level, so here's hoping they don't make a battery soon that can strap to its back.

Here's to hoping that they DO make one that has it's own power source.

Re:Out of control

[Migraineman]

You learn from your mistakes, and there's no substitute for "the real thing." You can crash the robot in a sim over and over, and it's no big deal. Real destruction with sparks and fire teaches you life-lessons ... I had a summer job (many years ago) with a rather large gub'ment contractor. We were working on a robotic arm tasked with de-palletizing ammunition - ammunition of the 5-inch diameter variety. The second day at the site, the programming team had gotten the arm all twisted up after several hours of fussing with the control software. The design lead saw the "home" switch on the control panel, and decided that starting from a clean setup would streamline things.

*** CRASH ! ***

Nobody had programmed any obstructions within the cell, and some Genius had put the servo drive rack within the robots hemisphere of motion. The shortest path to the home location went directly through the servo drive rack. And when I say "directly through," I mean "ripped the rack in half." Literally. Big multi-ton mother, indeed.

So there's a bunch of down time while equipment is replaced, and we're back on-site after about 3 weeks. To my surprise, the servo control rack is still within the robot's operating envelope, but the obstructions have been properly programmed. There's even a short demo where they try to move the arm into the obstruction, but the machine refuses (rather politely, I might add.) Several days of progress are made before the Brain Trust is at it again. One of the programmers decides it will be "cool" if the robot commits suicide - he'd been reading an Asmiov book if I recall correctly. So they program the BMTM arm to reach over and press the main power switch on the servo control rack. It refuses. So they place a piece of 3/4" black pipe in the end effector to create the necessary tool offset. Attempt number two goes [click] ...

*** CRASH ! ***

They had shut the main power breaker off, resulting in a rather ungraceful de-energizing event. Apparently the servo drives can "lurch" if power is abruptly removed. The arm stuffed the black pipe and the end effector halfway through the servo control rack ... which was thankfully de-energized.

Not surprisingly, we were not invited back for a third attempt to program the arm.