Robotics

I think we are overdue for a proper robotic pet. The Sony Aibo went some way towards giving us that, and is a marvellous achievement, but I think there is more that can be done.

I don't think that I am the person to produce one, but I can experiment in my own limited fashion. To that end I plan to make a few small robotic devices, the first of which will be a robotic arm.

This will be complex enough. I hope to figure out how to control servos via VB, through my Arduino Duemilanove. The Arduino will just shunt the servo positions to the servos, whereas the PC will do the calcualtions. I hope to build a decent Inverse Kinematics solution so that I can place the gripper at any XYZ location and the program figures out the rest. This should make movement and placement much easier.

I hope to make a mobile robot as a second project much later, but I'm still wondering what kind of propulsion I should try - maybe a hexapod walker, or a simple wheeled robot.

 

 

Robotic Arm Project

 

Build #001

My first go has seen a lot of progress. The arm is built and I can control servos via the arduino. Here is a small video of my gripper in action:

Robotic Arm WIP's

photophotophotophotophotophotophoto