Death of Cookie Monster Robot

Another death on the month of December.  If must not be a good month to be a robot around the Ratliff house.

This time Cookie Monster had just been programmed with updated code.  But his rough prototype design was showing signs of wear and tear.  The www.BudgetRobotics.com BigGripper inside his body broke around the fingers where they meet the push/pull arm attached to the servo horn.  This left the arms not closing all the way and limited movement of the gripper inside.

 

The sensor placement of dual PING sonar units for the eyes on the head and as eyes on the feet were a bit awkward.  People who viewed the robot did not understand why he needed eyes on his feet. The base where the feet mounted was made from Styrofoam board.  It was a quick solution but was starting to bend in spots.  It lasted over a year with limited use.  The goal with Cookie Monster was to build an interesting test bed for some ideas I had; so overall I achieved what I wanted with this robot.

The bad part is, Cookie Monster was so cute and he lasted for nearly two years I'm going to miss the little guy.  For now his parts will live on in other robots.  I believe one day I will have the technology to rebuild him.  :-)

New Commercial with Robots!

Most awesome commercial in the history of the world? I would think so, yes! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7DNYocXvR0

The GE commercial is awesome.  Anything with robots is awesome, but to see so many movie and real robots together in one commercial is just way too awesome.  My favorites to see was KITT from Knight Rider, the custom Johnny 5 like robot (I know if have seen that robot before, but I can't remember who made it) and seeing Data beam in towards the end.

Happy Roboting!

You Are Not Your Robot

I think this is an interesting commentary from: http://sstephenson.us/posts/you-are-not-your-code
"I have learned that in the open-source world, you are not your code. A critique of your project is not tantamount to a personal attack. An alternative take on the problem your software solves is not hostile or divisive. It is simply the result of a regenerative process, driven by an unending desire to improve the status quo."

I think this easily applies to robotics.  I know in the past folks have pointed out faults in my designs or made improvements and I've seen folks point out other robot builder's design faults and sometimes it can feel like a personal attack, but as long as we focus on critiques as valued input and an effort to share knowledge then I think we'll keep a positive outlook.

Behavior Based Robot At Work

From the pioneer or behavior based robotics design, Prof. Rodney Brooks, comes a new company called Rethink Robotics and a new industrial robotic system called Baxter. 

http://www.engineeringtv.com/video/Behavior-Based-Programming-of-t

This video from Engineering TV explains the benefits of how the behavior based system works.  Behavior based robotics I believe is light years ahead of neural net designs which is why I have abandoned my research on neural networks. 

My new research is going Back To The Future to focus on behavior bases systems, much like the program controls for the Baxter robot. 

I can't wait to search some of new ideas and robot projects here bases on this new line of development.

Death of a robot

This is what the death of a child sized android looks like. 

This robot was named David for the android in the movie A.I.  David was going to be a test platform for my AI research and used as an interactive robot to relate to children.  David's base and leg design were not as stable as I had hoped. 

Shown is David's guts being removed for parts to use in another robot.  Perhaps David will be rebuilt better in the future.

Tips on Parts Salvaging:

If you find yourself with some computers or electronics that you are going to toss out here are some tips for salvaging parts:

1. I like to keep on hand a couple of spare hard drives, floppy drives, CD-roms and CD/DVD burners but I don't save them all. If you tinker with computers keep a few on hand.  The rest you could sell on ebay rather than toss.

2. I almost always save computer memory and CPUs, even if they are very old.  They are small and you can throw them in drawer somewhere.  There does not appear to be a great demand for these, but one never knows.  

3. Jumpers, keep all that you can. Those little jumpers on old mother boards or video card, even hard drives come in handy if you lose one or need to create custom jumper settings on your own homebrew projects.

4. Screws. Keep the screws from the drive mounts and back pannel, those come in handy if you ever loose one.   Get a small divided container to store your little screws, you can never have too many.

5. Stand offs.  These little metal or nylon standoffs help support PCBs and most computers don't have them, but if you find them during your electronics tear down, keep them all.  You never know when you might want some and those little suckers are price.

6. Wired connectors. I love to cut out wired connectors of any kind. The small ones that go to the mother board from the front pannel are handy for smaller electronics and the power supply connectors come in hand for larger voltage load connections like DC motors. You can easily and quickly splice in these connectors to your own projects.

7. Switches.  If you can easily save switches those are handy to keep as well.  If I have to spend more than 2 minutes getting a switch out, for me, it's not worth it. 

8. Speakers.  I love saving old computer speakers, they are so easy to add to microcontrollers or robots to give audio feedback or make random R2D2 type beeps. 

There are tons of other parts you could keep, motors and LEDs come to mind; but those are ones I personally do not save often. 

Happy Roboting,
-Justin

Well, looks like I have not been keeping up with my blog, bad me! First things first, I finished reading the book I got at Christmas, titled: Growing Up With Lucy, by Steve Grand, copyright 2003. Its a robotics/AI book. I love this book even though its not what I expected. I was hoping the book would more of a step-by-step, Young Frankenstein esc "How I Did It".

The book was actually more of a journal through the development of the Lucy robot as a platform for research. Steve Grand is a self educatated and self driven researcher. His writing is humorious and witty without being Fozzy Bear comedy silly and makes the theories and basic models for AI/Brain theory easy to understand. His book was very enjoyable to ready and is now one of my top favorite books. In other news, I've been re-focused on learning database design, Access databases and Power Shell scripting at work for United Health Care. Not only am I able to automate many of Security Admin tasks with Power Shell but I'm also able to leverage what Access offers in way of easy database query and reporting functions. I used to think Access was garbage, but its actually rather robust and I think it can actually offer something to the robotics community. I'm also taking what I have learned and applying it to the creation of a Hobbiest Parts Database in Access. I think it will turn out rather useful to anyone wanting to manage their parts, tools, electronics, even scrapbooking items. Once finished I plan to make it a free download. I think hobbiests will find it handy. In family news on 3/2/12 my parents home/farm in Menifee county, Kentuck was struck by an EF3 tornado. The damage was extensive but both my parents are ok. I've learned alot from seeing what a tornado can do and what types of items people need after a tornado. Sometime in the future I plan to make apost just about my experience with seeing peoples needs after a tornado and offer some advise and tips on how folks can volunteer to help after a tornado if so inclined Until my next post, Happy Roboting and may God bless you.

Valentines Day 2012

I love it that my wife supports my robotics tinkering and research. Check out my Robot Scientist card!! I'm in robot/nerd heaven! lol

Seriously though, I loved the card and share it. I hope everyone reading has a spouse or mate that is as supportive as mine.

Robot Building for Beginners, Second Edition by David Cook

Robot Building for Beginners, Second Edition by David Cook

Review: I read this book on Books24x7.com on, which is a great service. You can read tons of books online for a membership fee. Books are of a business, IT, programming and technical nature. They have a good selection of robotics books too.

This book is not bad for a beginner who wants to build a nice line following robot on their own and really learn about the parts and tools involved in the process. This books does a nice job of covering the subject of making a very basic robot and introduces someone to robot building through the line following robot. This book does not cover any other types of robots and does not cover more advanaced typics like microcontrollers or computer control. If you desire to build something more than a line following robot I would not recommend this book.

Awesome video on Subsumption based robots

From Robots.net I came across this 2 hour video from David Anderson, a member of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group, with a great discussion and demonstration on some of the uses for subsumption.

You can view the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CXReb7f0Eo&feature=player_embedded#!

What I like is how far David has expertly taken the subsumption design approach to create what I would call high performing robots with a somewhat basic design.

In other words, his robots are not covered in duct tape with wires hanging out all over like mine, hehe

Pretty neat to see and educational. =)
Happy Roboting,
-Justin Ratliff