Originally designed and built by www.letmakerobots.com for a promotional contest this little yellow robot will seek out surfaces using its ‘eyes’ and tap out a beat with its built in drum sticks. Heres some specs…
Weight: 250 grams
Actuators / output devices: 7 Geared Motors, 2 Speakers
CPU: Picaxe 28×1
Power source: 4 AA Batteries
Sensors / input devices: Microphone, SRF05 Ultrasonic Rage Finder
Check out this video below of a Sarcoman commercial entertainment robot playing air hockey
The project that has been developed since 1993 by the Air Hockey Project in the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois. The team headed by Mark Spong is funded by the National Science Foundation.
The project brief was as follows…..
“Development of an Air Hockey-playing Robot
M. W. Spong,* S. Hutchinson, B. Bishop, C. Partridge
National Science Foundation, IRI-9216428, CMS-9712170; Electric Power Research Institute, RP 8030-14
This project is to develop a three-degree-of-freedom air hockey-playing robot. Research issues being addressed include real-time visual servoing, adaptive camera calibration and windowing, hybrid estimation, and hybrid nonlinear control. Based on the reliability of sensory information, a supervisory control system switches among a fixed set of nonlinear controllers, each designed for a particular task such as blocking or striking the puck. Future research is aimed at learning through repetitive play.”
Unfortuntley not much information regarding the project is on the internet, although we did manage to find this page which gives us the following information on the robot…
“The term “hand-eye coordination” aptly summarizes Gretzky’s system architecture, which consists of a three-jointed motor-driven arm, a camera that samples the puck path, and a variety of software and hardware (including a SunSparc workstation) that keeps everything working together”
Not quite as agile as Steve Austin but still very impressive, this video show’s Jesse Sullivan with two robotic arms. It is controlled using his own nerves, allowing him to control the robotic limbs as if they were his own….
Jesse lost both his arms after being electrocuted in 2001 and this pioneering work has been undertaken by the Rehabilitation Unit in Chicago US
To find out more information about robotic limbs then check out the following sites
Rehabilitation Unit Of Chigaco - More Information abotu Jesse Sullivan
Society For Neuroscience - A Good explanation of the workings of robotic limbs
Robotic Muscles - How robotic muscles systems operate
Heres a great guide to the latest robot’s currently in existence. Robots similar to Honda’s Asimo pictured on the right.
Asimo stands 130cm high and weighs 54 kilograms. He can walk on two feet at up to 6mph and can run round corners whilst maintaing balance. It doesn’t look to far off robots becoming a useful appliance for everyday life.
If only I could get a robot to tidy up after me….
The guide has the following robots listed
- Asimo
- Albert Hubo: an “Einstein” Robot
- Stanley: the autonomous vehicle
- BigDog: the robotic mule
- RiSE: the climbing robot
- QRIO: the dancing robot
- HRP-2 Promet: the robotic butler
- RHex: the Robotic Pooch
- WR-07: a real Transformer
- The Lego Robotic Bartender
Each entry has a full history, photo and a video of the robot in action, check out a quick video of Asimo in action below.
Check out the robot guide at at this link to see more video’s
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