This may be even creepier than the Flaming Android Pants.
According to Pink Tentacle, this bluish-grayish humanoid was was designed to mimic the behavior of a one- to two-year-old child, and is called CB2. It was built by researchers at Osaka Univeristy in Japan.
The researchers say that once CB2 is equipped with software that gives it the ability to learn, they will be very interested in undertaking the long-term challenge of teaching it how to walk and talk.
And now for something completely slightly that is certain to be, in some quantifiable way, different.
Dear Readers,
And now for something completely slightly different.
As impressive as the rise of the robot has been, in the spirit of Earth Day, I pose the question: are robots bad for the environment? I am afraid that the answer is currently yes. They combine the toxic chemicals and heavy metals found in computers with the oil and pollution found in automobiles. Even though a few robots are powered by internal combustion engines, most robots draw power from the electrical grid, much of which is still generated by coal and oil.
We should think now about how future robots could be made more environmentally friendly, rather than (as with the automobile) after it's too late. I suggest that mass-produced robots of the future be made from recycled and recyclable materials, such as steel and aluminum. We shouldn't use any material that has to be thrown into a landfill at the end of its life, although something that could be thrown into a compost heap— like cork— would be acceptable.
Big batteries are full of nasty chemicals, and are also heavy and take loads of energy to cart around. However, if we rule out internal combustion, what sort of power source is left? Nuclear?
Well, a nuclear-powered humanoid robot wouldn't need a whole lot of fuel to run— but, no, that would be rather dangerous. Even though it would last for a long time— but no.
That leaves a couple of other options. One option may be to design some sort of food-powered robot. But a better option may be to use a fuel cell to generate power from hydrogen, or more likely, ethanol or alcohol.
There would still be the issue of robot emissions, but as long as the fuel was derived from plants, there shouldn't be a net increase in greenhouse gases, unless of course, the plants were being converted into ethanol or alcohol faster than they were replenished.
Dear Readers,
And now for something completely different.
So, it appears that after all my lofty proclamations about posting more often, somebody, as they say, thought they had a better idea. And it wasn't me, honest. Well, maybe it was me just a little bit. Okay, 100%. Whatever.
Anyway, I have got the most delightfully tedious trivia for you. As I've mentioned, I've been tinkering with an old Mobile Armatron with the aim of putting it under autonomous computer control. I partially rewired the motors and built a small power supply for the eventual onboard logic, and then began on a motor controller that would fit in the Armatron's "trunk space". I ordered a few L293 chips, since they seemed to be ideal for the purpose, and lots of people seemed to like them.
Unfortunately, I learned that setting up the circuit on a piece of protoboard would definitely not work. I ended up with a spaghetti nest of jumper wires that was so thick I couldn't even fit them all in. Obviously, I'd have to design a board. I set that project aside for a while in order to do some reasearch on how to do that. I finally discovered three techniques which made it relatively easy.
One discovery is Eagle, a printed circuit design application, which makes designing boards easy (for limited values of easy.) You draw your schematic out in the schematic designer, choosing parts from a vast library and wiring them together. It is not a launch-it-and-go application. Eagle is quirky and odd and has a definite learning curve. I would definitely advise anybody to run through a few tutorials before trying to design a masterpiece. It took me a few hours, but I did get the hang of the basics.
The next discovery was of the toner-transfer resist method. Laser printer and copier toner can be transfered from paper to a copper-clad printed circuit board with the use of a simple clothes iron. Of course, using the correct sort of paper makes a big difference. It's been said, and I must agree, that magazine paper works quite well.
The final piece of the puzzle was the cupric chloride etching method. A reusable etching fluid can be made by combing ingredients from both the drugstore and from the hardware store. And it works pretty well. I did notice that the etching process was pretty slow, but I eventually realized that was because it was a cold night. I had set my etching container in a Pyrex dish to catch any spills, so pouring hot water into the dish warmed the etchant and sped things along.
So, you may be wondering, what do I have to show for all that work? Well, it looks sort of like this:
Pink Tentacle brings us the 2007 Robot of the Year. The winner is a food-safe pick-and-place robot that can handle up to 120 bon-bons per minute. Lucy, you're fired.
Although the medical runners-up are performing noble work, I'm intrigued by the Miuro, which is essentially a rolling boombox. Could it, I wonder, be programmed to barge into my room early in the morning and begin a specially crafted playlist designed to wake me up gently? Could it also be programmed to evade my inevitable groggy attempts to capture it? If it can do that, the surely it can also begin playing a "Time to Go" song at just the right moment to urge me out the front door on time.
It just wouldn't be a proper Link-O-Rama if I were to cover only one subject. So here's a musical teacup:
Toyota recently unveiled its robotic violinist. Like many commercial Japanese robots, the violinist is designed to be clean and friendly in appearance, the better to project the image of a helper and friend.
A little progress was at last made on the fabricator. The X-axis platform is coming along nicely. The drive screw is connected to the platform. A motor/screw coupling still needs to be made and the X-axis rails still need to be attached to the base.
The Mobile Armatron upgrade is also coming along nicely. The Armatron has a surprising amount of empty space in its base and shoulder, and a small amount in its head. We'll fix that!
First up is a collection of retrofuturisitic artwork from Eastern Bloc popular science magazines. Even though I don't believe I've seen any of these pieces before, many of them seem strangely familiar. The sensor antenna or weapon aimed at a distant galaxy, the tree within a bubble within a frozen waste, the astronaut with the raygun.
Next, we have a cartoon that I think about now and then. I first encountered a slightly different version of in an old computer science textbook. (How old? It had a few pages on core memory.) Some of the artist's embellishments are good additions, particularly the easy chair suspended from the tree, and some I agree with a bit less (perhaps I'd switch "as documented" and "as supported".) But the lesson remains the same: the customer wants a tire swing. She wants to go forward, backward, left, right, and around in circles. She does not want to hold the swing and run back and forth, no matter how many seats it has. And while a stationary seat beneath a moving tree may be a clever solution and an impressive engineering feat, it's kind of like a whistling dog story. Like a whistling dog, it's astonishing that the thing can whistle -- but it doesn't actually whistle very well.
And speaking of which, Toyota has unveiled a violin-playing robot. Does it, I wonder, have a MIDI interface?
So, to my utter lack of surprise, building the fabricator is turning out to be just a wee tiny bit more troublesome than I'd hoped. The easy part's done: I managed to screw together a few pipe fittings before being confounded yet again by details and more details. The wheels are too small, the motor shafts and threaded rods are different sizes, there were no nuts to match the rods, my hacksaw broke, and one of the pipe segments is too short. Can you guess which one?
In my opinion, it's the segment leading from the uppermost elbow to the floor flange (the disc with four small holes.) Since the tool of the day will be attached to the floor flange and the work surface will move around beneath it, then unless I'm mistaken, the machine will be unable to fabricate anything longer than this segment.
Well, you know what they say: Never use a "point zero" release of anything.
I think I know what I want for Christmas:
Well, not too much to report today. I put together my Velleman Running Microbug kit. It works, but it tends to make a beeline directly toward the shop light, and then to crash into the wall. It might be fun to play with it in the dark with a flashlight. I bought it last week, at San Diego Electronic Supply. This is a great little electronics shop.
(I wonder if they'd be interested in starting or joining a hackerspace?)
Anyway, next I turned my attention to the Mobile Armatron. I was able to figure out the motor control system, which is basically that one end of each motor is grounded, and that pressing a button on the control pendant sends either a positive or negative voltage into the other end of the motor, causing it to turn either clockwise or counterclockwise. I think it will be pretty simple to cook up a transistorized version of the control pendant, but there's another small problem. He's got a twitchy wrist. It will turn up to a point, and then stop and twitch until someone pushes on it. I took his entire wrist assembly apart and discovered a gear that had two chipped teeth. Not much I could do about that. But I think just the act of taking it apart and putting it back together helped a little bit.
If we can digitize a human with a milling machine, it seems to me that we ought to be able to fabricate robots in a single pass. I doubt they'd be the clanking tin monsters of last century. Instead, they'd be rubbery humanoids, hydraulically or pneumatically powered. At first, they'd probably have electronic brains and hydraulic pumps built in the usual fashion, but perhaps with the invention of extremely high-resolution fabricators, even those could be printed or extruded along with the rest of the unit. Eventually, they might literally walk off the assembly line.
NO assembly required.
...Mega Man!
Well, not quite. This is Zeno, and he can see, hear, speak, and
act when wirelessly networked with his control computer. Check out this video
of him in action. He also has a blog.
Doctor Wily's apparently been busy also. The little propellor dudes...
...are
now apparently available
in kit form for the spying upon of neighbors. Two thoughts: one, get automatic
blinds, and, two, what about the little helmet dudes?
Q. How can I make an android out of spare parts?
A. Well, that all depends on a few things. First of all, what do you mean by android? Most people consider an android to be any robot made to resemble a human, but others consider an android only to be a robot made to resemble a male human. The term for a robot built specifically to resemble a human female is gynoid. A robot that is made to otherwise resemble a human, but that is genderless, would be an androgynoid. The opposite of an androgynoid-- a robot made to resemble both man and woman-- would, of course, be a hermaphrodroid.
Ahem. But back to androids. Some would stretch the definition of android to encompass any artificial human, even classifying Frankenstein's monster as an android. By this definition, then, building an android from spare parts is as easy as a midnight visit to the neighborhood morgue. The proper application of 1.21 gigawatts to the android-to-be is left as an exercise for the reader. Should thunderstorms be rare in your area, or if your stomach gets queasy over the thought of desecrating corpses, you may be advised to consider building a purely mechanical android. (You may also wish to consider hiring a hunchbacked minion to do your desecration for you.)
Anyway, the important question is what spare parts are available. I assume you have stiff wire, bicycle cable, scrap wood, screws, springs, hinges, motors or solenoids of some sort, sculpting clay, polystyrene for vacuum-forming, a vacuum-forming rig, and silicone, urethane, or something similar to mold into the android's features. I suppose you could just substitute papier-mache for the last few items, but the resulting android won't fool anybody except the birds. So, having gathered your materials, follow these easy steps to build your own electronic replicant.
Behold the underactuated prosthetic fingertip!
Quite possibly the most impressive thing I've seen all day.
For a change, I did something interesting today. The FIRST Robotics Competition was being held at the Sports Arena, and admission was free, so I went and took a look. High schools all over the state put together teams to build robots for this competition. It wasn't a combat competition, instead, the robots worked in teams to pick up inflatable rings and hang them on a goal structure. Although I wouldn't have minded seeing a few sparks fly, I think this goal required the students to put a bit more thought into their designs than a robot brawl would have. Why didn't they have this way back when I was in school? (Probably because computers were an altogether more seductive subject then.) Anyway, here are a few pictures...
Q. I am a beginner. How can I build a working robot out of things found around the house?
A. Well. That all depends on three factors.
1. How much of a beginner are you?
If you know next-to-nothing about mechanical engineering, electronics, soldering, wiring, programming, or any of the other skills needed to build a robot, then you may want to start by visiting your nearest library and finding yourself a copy of something like Robot Building for Beginners, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots, or 123 Robotics Experiments for the Evil Genius. All these books will talk you through the construction of a simple robot, although quite a bit of shopping may be involved, depending on...
2. What sorts of things can be found around your house?
You can build robots from just about anything, depending on what you expect them to do. Your imagination's the limit. Well, the laws of physics are really the limit. But you don't need to use stainless steel or brushed aluminum if you can't find any. You can make perfectly nice robots from wood, various kinds of plastic, stiff wire, old lunchboxes, even papier-mâché. Motorized toys in particular often make good bases for robots. Of course, it also depends on...
3. What's your definition of a robot?
Everybody has a favorite definition of robot, be it worker, mechanical man, programmable mobile machine, electronic gladiator, humanoid automaton, or kinetic sculpture. Sirius Cybernetics even defines a robot as "your plastic pal that's fun to be with." Fun being in the eye of the beholder, that definition could even encompass a doll or action figure. You probably envision something that moves on its own, such as this draw bot. I consider it to be more of a kinetic sculpture than a true robot. However, it can quickly be made from common household items-- if you can steal a motor from something that won't be missed, such as an old toy car.
If you're feeling a bit more ambitious, are comfortable with a soldering iron, and have access to a good supply of spare parts-- from a broken cassette player, say-- you might be interested in building a BEAM robot, such as a solaroller. The philosophy of BEAM-- Biology, Electronics, Aesthertics and Mechanics-- is to build simple robots from simple components that exhbit complex behaviours. Rather than trying unsuccessfully to build artificial humans-- or even artificial chipmunks-- BEAM builders successfully produce what might be thought of as artificial plankton.
Rather than posting another Robot Update that says nothing of importance except that it's been a while since the last Robot Update, we're going to try a something new, a question-and-answer column! Now, since nobody's actually asked me anything directly yet, I'll instead respond to a hot(ish) search topic.
Q. Control cordless drill motor with basic stamp
A. Although your query was phrased less than elegantly, I'll attempt to answer what I assume is a question. A pair of cordless drills or electric screwdrivers may be the ideal propulsion system for a combat robot. Consider the advantages: built-in gearbox, adjustable speed and torque, and modular, self-contained rechargeable battery packs. They can also be obtained for a relatively low cost, especially when compared to buying and/or fabricating the components separately. They can also be considered to be easily replaceable, another advantage to a combat robot.
Before we begin the interesting part of this article, I'd like to point out that I am not a professional electronic engineer, nor do I play one on television. This is also not a step-by-step tutorial on hacking your rechargeable drill. This is just me telling you very generally how I would go about doing it. It could work, but then again, it could explode in your face, set your house on fire, frighten your children, or just plain not work. I haven't actually tried it, so I don't know.
Still there? Good. Let's take a look at the guts of a cordless drill.
You'll notice that the on/off switch and the speed-controlling rheostat have been removed. That's fine, as I wouldn't be using them. You'll also notice that the battery jack and the case are missing. This is so that I can make a point. Below, you'll see the equivalent assembly from a remote-controlled dune buggy.
Notice anything? That's right, they're not all that different. So at least one way of controlling these motors should have just occurred to you. If you're building a remote-controlled combat robot, off-the-shelf RC controllers will probably fit the bill.
But since you also asked about BASIC Stamps, I assume you're going to want to program your robot, rather than just puppeteer it by remote control. That's fine, too. In that case, I'd build my favorite motor controller, the old-fashioned electromechanical H-bridge. I'd choose this over a transistorized or solid-state controller mainly because I don't know what voltage the drills will be using. Relays can typically handle 120V AC, so handling 12V-36V DC shouldn't be a problem. Also, the brushes of the motors can introduce a lot of noise into the power supply, and this method will physically isolate this noise from the control circuitry. And finally, listening for the clicking of the relays can be a valuable troubleshooting tool.
Here's the schematic.
Typical parts are 1K resistors, 2N2222 transistors, and 1N4003 diodes. I try to use 5V relays in order to avoid the need for a 6V or 12V power supply. However, if the design of your bot means that you already have a 6V or 12V bus, then by all means use it.
The finished product might look something like this.
There are, of course, some drawbacks to this circuit. The main drawback is that the motors will always run at a constant speed, as determined by the supply voltage. This may be what you want. However, a robot that can only go full speed ahead could be difficult to maneuver. I would suggest the following modification if you want speed control.
This version will use a big fat power transistor in place of the SPST relay. You could then feed a PWM signal from the BASIC Stamp to the transistor to control the motor's speed. I'm told the diode across the pins of the transistor is necessary to protect it from backlash voltage when the motor shuts off. Hopefully I've got it in the right place. Values of these parts depend on your motor.
The finished product might look something like this:
This concludes our first installment of q+=a. If you have a question you'd like answered, go ahead and leave it as a comment. Also, if you don't like my answer, go ahead and leave that as a comment. See you next time!
You may be wondering what's happened with the robots since the last Robot Update, a month ago. I regret to inform you that the answer is "nothing." However, the answer will soon enough be "something." I have, at last, obtained some much needed extra space for my Secret Laboratories, which will soon be more organized than ever.
Currently taking the form of an ice cream cone.
