| Related sites for http://www.hero2000robots.com/9501.html |
| The_UK_Cybernetics_Club An online collective based in the United Kingdom. Membership is open to anyone interested in intelligent mobile robots. | | Union_College_Robotics_Club A campus club open to students of Union College in Schenectady, New York, United States. UCRC annually designs a robot for competition. Site includes project photos, mailing list, and meeting minutes. | | University_of_Arizona_Micro_Air_Vehicle_Club Student group that develops Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs), tiny radio-controlled or autonomous robot aircraft. Meets weekly on UA campus. | | University_of_Illinois_at_Chicago_Engineering_Design_Team Based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 2000. The UIC EDT is open to students of UIC and holds weekly meetings on campus. Site includes a project list, meeting schedule, and mailing list | | University_of_Toronto_Robotics_Association The University of Toronto Robotics Association (UTRA) is primarily interested in designing and constructing competitive robots for competition in BattleBots and other similar events. | | Vancouver_Island_Robotics Based in Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The site includes meeting information and a mailing list. | | Vancouver_Robotics_Club Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The club holds monthly meetings. Site includes meeting calendar and mailing list. | | Waterloo_Aerial_Robotics_Group Based at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. WARG was founded in 1997 and has the goal of developing autonomous air and ground robots. Membership is open to UW students. Site includes meeti | | Western_Canadian_Robotics_Society Based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 2001. WCRS holds monthly meetings at the SAIT campus and puts on the annual Western Canadian Robot Games. Site includes photos, general information and a | | Ypsilanti_and_Ann_Arbor_Area_Robotics_Club YAAARC holds monthly meetings in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Site includes robot news, mailing list, discussion forums, and technical articles. | | Ackermann,_Jürgen Former director of the Institute of Robotics and Mechatronics at the German Aerospace Center. | | Anders\'_Mindstorms_page Showcases a variety of Ander's Mindstorms projects including a Yatzymatic, a Pinball machine and a cooler. Site also include information on Mindstorms programming and sensors. | | Anderson,_David_P_ Director of the SMU Geophysical Imaging Lab. Member of the Dallas Personal Robotics Group. Site includes detailed descriptions and photos of his autonomous robots including nBot, a two-wheeled balanci | | Aquaticus_ROV Description of a homebuilt underwater robot. | | Arkin,_Ronald Regents' Professor and Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. Interests include behavior-based reactive control, robot survivability, multi-agent systems, biorobot | | Astolfi,_Alessandro Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, and Centre for Process Systems Engineering, Imperial College, London. Interests in Control Theory. | | Balancing_Robot A biped robot capable of standing up on its own from a fallen position. | | Barlas,_Omar A hobby robot that can pick up and move small objects. | | B9Creations Mike Joyce's construction journal describing his progress on a full size replica of the "Lost in Space" B9 Robot and other homebrew robots. | | Birk,_Andreas Professor heading robotics research at the International University Bremen (IUB). | | Borenstein,_J_ Research Scientist and Head of the Mobile Robotics Lab within the University of Michigan's Department of Mechanical Engineering. Interests in mobile robots, obstacle avoidance, odometry, positionin | | Brooks,_Rodney Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. | | Bryan\'s_Robotics_Journal Weblog detailing Bryan's experiences designing and building his robot. | | Burgard,_Wolfram Professor of Computer Science at the University of Freiburg and head of the research lab for Autonomous Intelligent Systems. Areas of interest lie in Artificial Intelligence and mobile robots. | | Byrne,_Jeffrey Jeff Byrne is a robotics and computer vision professional, working on image segmentation, image aided navigation and visual collision obstacle detection for unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) and unmanned g | | Chladny,_Ryan Describes Ryan's work on a large, hydraulic, autonomous, robotic vehicle. Includes related pictures and links. | | Christensen,_Henrik_I_ Professor of computer science at Kungl Tekniska Högskolan, Stockholm. Areas of interest include mobile robotics, autonomous systems, computer vision and biologically inspired robot systems. | | Christoph\'s_Rug_Warrior_Page Tips and schematics to build your own Rug Warrior Robot. | | Corky\'z_Robotz A small, remote-controlled robot made from a BASIC Stamp and common parts. Includes instructions, schematic and code listing. | | Cricket_the_Robot Information on building an autonomous, walking robot. Includes schematics and code. | | DaVinci_Robotics_Educational_Foundation Learn about the group's various robot projects. Also includes advice for those who wish to build robots. | | Davison,_Andrew_J_ Lecturer in Computing at Imperial College London, carrying out research in real-time computer vision, robotics and SLAM. | | Dillmann,_Rüdiger Professor at the Universität Karlsruhe with research interests in mobile systems, medical applications, interactive learning and humanoids. | | Dratrobotics Photos and descriptions of the author's projects and robots, many of which are based on Lego Mindstorms. | | Duckett,_T_ Researcher in Autonomous Sensor Systems. Assistant Professor at the Centre for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems at Örebro University in Sweden. Research interests include autonomous robots, machine | | Dudek_,_G_ Professor at the School of Computer Science and Centre for Intelligent Machines (CIM). Research areas include navigation, shape, mobile robotics, computer vision, vision, visualization, and recognitio | | Elners,_Tom BEAM robots, hexapods, mini sumo, light seekers and circuits. | | Four_Legged_Walker Walking robot using a BASIC Stamp 2SX and two Mini SSC servo controllers to control 12 servos. | | Fox,_D_ Assistant Professor at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington. His research interests lie in artificial intelligence and its application to mobile robotics, believing | | Gutmann,_S_ Sony Corporation, Tokyo, Japan working in the Digital Creatures Laboratory on navigation for entertainment robots. Research interests include mobile robot self-localization, map-building, object recog |
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Ok maybe not, I'm the one on the left, John, Ted (Joe's body), and Gary...A comment about our club and why I like it. 1. No club officers. Everyones the same. Anyone who tries to establish leadership gets tossed out on their ass (until they can behave themselves) .2. The club focus is the Heathkit Hero line of robots ( 2000's most often ) but we're flexible. There have been sightings of RB5X's, ER-1's, Rhino's, and a strange collection of kit robot's. All are welcome.3. There is NO agendas, No Goals, No contests, No classes (No class?), no dues(unless you want to give us money). We fix, build, and design whatever. There has also been sightings of programming. I've attended meetings (RSSC) that were painfully boring, No interaction ( with humans or robots ) and stuffy induh-viduals with no poo stink!4. Long distance Clubbing is on line. We announce the Web address when the meeting starts. We also have a instant messager that is on line as well. We are trying to add sound next, So you can listen in on the interesting conversation and swearing that go on at our meetings.5. It's fun! That's why we keep going back!!!June 27th 2004 meeting.Gary, John, and myself gathered at Gary's house where we were treated with hospitality and burgers ( Gary makes a mean meat patty ). Marie makes the best strawberry jam and banana bread with fresh coffee. We had settled in for what would be an afternoon of robot building, repairing and experimenting. Until... John and I conspired to take a Hero 1 apart for what Gary called "Sick", "Repulsive", and other words I care not to repeat. All hell broke loose.We or maybe I ( I'll take responsibility ) wanted to incorporate some of the Evolution ER-1 hardware and software into the Hero 1 (Look into projects section for progress) to upgrade the little fellow and show case it as a cool project. Boy was I wrong....I guess it's one thing to add something to the robot ( I.E. adding a Minibook computer to a Hero 2000, I'll explain later ) Vs. Gutting it and starting new.. I'll quote Gary from the news group:"Kevin Goodwin is here, and I'm sorry to have to report somethinghorrible is taking place. Kevin has a brand new ER1 kit with camerasand all the goodies, a great little 1.2 GHz computer about the size of aCD and about 1.5 inches thick, and a Hero 1 body with a lot of issueswith it. He is going to GUT the Hero 1, and adapt all the ER1 stuff toit, using the computer to run the whole thing. He'll wind up with anER1, an ER1 arm, cameras, IR sensors, etc, in a Hero 1 body. Neat idea,but it's hard for me to watch a repairable Hero 1 being eviserated. Egad."What he forgot to tell you was that it had mouse S#!T in it. We're still friends.August 28, 2004 meeting.Meeting minutes from Gary:"We are sitting here in my robotics lab, myself, Kevin Goodwin and hisson (also Kevin), and Lord Hotwing. Massive trading and cheating isgoing on.Hotwing is taking delivery of a spare Hero 2000 from me, and is checkingit out like he knows I am crooked. So far, he hasn't found the majordefects. As long as the floppy drive works properly, and loads in theH2K DOS, I think I have him in my pocket.I put my 33 AH battery in my H2K, and gave Hotwing the one that was init. The 33 AH battery was less expensive than the one that is supposedto go in there, but just barely fits, sideways. Next I'm going to hardwire my MaxStream RF RS232 transceiver so that I no longer need to beconnected to anything to program the robot (or use it for a remote slaveas I've been doing lately, the operating program running on a hostlaptop). The range on the transceiver is 20 miles with the goodantennas, 1500 feet indoors with the antennas I'm using.Kevin is fiddling with an H2K arm trainer and an EPROM burner. KevinJunior (age 13) is happily working over my Rhino robot, picking thingsup with it and moving them around. I'll teach him to use it in teachmode in awhile.Later plans for the day include getting my printer to work on the LAN(Hotwing's task), perhaps interface a camera into a webcam application(we will not be removing our clothes), eat a bunch of pizza and drinkcoffee. I'm personally on a quest to learn Windows programming using C,but with all this activity I may not work on that.If anyone has technical questions today, feel free to ask. We don'tknow much individually, and not much more collectively, but we're betterthan nothing.Gary, Kevin and Hotwing"That was pretty much it. I tried to give back John's arm back, but he wanted mounted on the trainer (Um... OK) I'll have pictures when I'm done. Maybe It will be the first entries into the Trainer section of the web page...October 10, 2004 MeetingMeeting minutes...Well... There was this HUGE Flame war on the Hero_Owners (whiner) Group and some how, our minutes or the fact we had a meeting that day was lost in the fire. Oh well. Anyway, I turned in my drawings to Gary for the new encoder wheels which I noticed there was no big interest in the newsgroup. Showed the guys the upgraded springs for the clutch assembly... Then Got This response...Do you happen to know a replacement source for the tension spring inthe gripper? The big spring in my gripper broke in twopieces. :-( . Btw, what exactly is the clutch upgrade, how doesit differ from the clutch in the original robot?ThanksBrianNow imagine me pounding my head against a table. You can't make some people happy.Got my new marching orders to design a Hero 1 arm case, get DOS 2.1 into a prom. ( hey Mom, no need for a floppy ). And Finally get that Nasty eprom burner going..Kev... November 20,2004 MeetingMeeting minutes from Gary,"We managed to go only forward this time, which is unusual. With thehelp of Hotwing, I got my new 433 MHz single board computer set up torun under Win98, with hard drive, floppy drive and CD all connected.Took a bit to do that, but after a day of installing, its now ready totake over duties as remote host of my Hero 2000 project.Kevin spent the day putting Hotwing's RB5X back together, which arrivedin pieces. As many of you will recall, Kevin more often is seen takingrobots apart rather than putting them together, so this was a treat towatch. As usual here at the Resurrectionists Society, the robot woundup needing things that were not immediately available. Being in awell-equipped lab (read junky), the crew was able to scrounge a wallwart to fill in for a 6 volt battery, the one coming from an ill Hero 1being quite dead. A 1/2 amp glass fuse was substituted for a blown 1amp fuse. Other miscellaneous parts were consumed in wholly improperapplications, but I missed much of it while swearing at a hard drive,trying to coax it into formatting more quickly. After some fiddling,and a few reversed connections, the RB5X fired up! Of course, the 1/2amp fuse entertained us all by glowing red hot without actually burningopen. And we waxed nostalgic as we marveled at how much the RB5X soundslike a Hero 1 (same voice chip). Kevin and Hotwing were quite pleasedwith themselves after it was all over.While watching Kevin fix the RB5X, and helping me get my SBC set up,Hotwing configured my printer to run from a wireless device. So now Ican print from anywhere in the house. My wife noted that we don't evenneed to get out of bed on the weekends anymore -- no reason now that theprinter is wireless.At the close of the day, we all gave away some things that nobody reallywants, most of which had already changed hands between us at least oncealready. I gave everyone my cold, a malady I don't want for sure. Idon't feel all that much better, since they didn't take the whole thing,but I am at least somewhat improved.Some time in the near future months, we'll have a web cam set up in theLab so you can all join us.Best regards,Gary Livick" February 27, 2005 MeetingThere was an invasion of RB5X's at the meeting. We had robots from just the base to full up with arms. The arms are pretty nice, better than the Hero 1 in my opinion. John an I went through all the available programs for the RB5X to see how they worked in the robot. We pretty much put them through their paces. The Hero's that were at the meeting got bored and fell asleep. Once again we had Gary's mean hamburgers which are great as always. At the close of the meeting we had our assignments, some robot parts and some enthusiasm to continue on. Kev The July 31, 2005 meeting consisted of an assundry of robots, (RB5X's, Hero Jr's and one "UGLY" Hero 2000 arm. Gary had got the RB5X interface to Computer interface software to work and has already started plans to control the RB5X like his Hero 2000. I got work on Joe's 2K arm by recabling the arm and getting it ready to install. We attempted to web cam the whole thing but ran in to technical difficulties.. Oh and last but not least I got a new Hero Jr. from Joe. A real nice critter too.KevThe Sept 11, 2005 meeting was spent working on a Hero 1 and a Hero 2000 arm (can you see a theme going here). No trades happened with robots and helicopters (darn it!) but I did end up with more arm parts. Yeah... I don't get it either, but I think I know why ( or how) they multiply in my office. The steaks, yes steaks, where excellent and so was the company. There was six of us at the meeting ( growing ) including a new member and his wife ( my wife would NEVER dream of going to a "Nerdfest" as she call's it). That's pretty much it. KevThe October 29, 2005Meeting minutes from Gary"Group,Another successful meeting of the Southern California RobotResurrectionists Society, also sometimes called the SoCal Hero OwnersGroup, was held today at my house.Present today were Kevin, Ted, Hotwing and myself. I spent the daydetermining for a fact that I did not have the right source code forHotwing's RB5X. Nobody but a roboticist would spend 8 hours looking forone 16 bit address to get a sonar range, and feeling fulfilled in havingdiscovered that what was needed was the V 1.3 printout. And salivatingover the prospect of getting the right source and decoding the machinelanguage from an Intel Extended Hex listing. I can hardly wait. Sick,there's something sick about that.Ted has a Hero 2000 that has been essentially inoperative for 15 years.(He has 2 actually, not sure what kind of shape the other one is in.)Kevin has been working on the arm for it for the last couple ofmeetings, but the problems with it go back at least 6 months. It was atough combination of a number of things that were wrong, with lastmonth's determination being that a rebuild kit was needed. Ted boughtone of those years ago, but just hadn't installed it yet, so he broughtit this time and Kevin set about effecting the final repairs andadjustments. The first issue was a broken limit switch used to detectthe detent in one of the cable drums. It was mooshed, but by chance Ihad two miniature limit switches in my spares case that had the sameholes and same general form factor. One got wrecked right away becausethe actuation button dropped in the set screw hole and sheered off. Iwas busy with other things, but heard Kevin say, "that limit switch isnot working." Multitasking between LDA, ORX, JMP, etc., and "that limitswitch is not working," I'm thinking, I should be ANDing while alsothinking, wait a minute, we just put that limit switch in. But I leftit alone because Kevin doesn't usually want any help. As long as he istalking non-stop, everything is fine. I followed the whole thing alongin my subconscious, and heard somehow that the actuator button wassheered off. I could smell solder as I was retrieving RB5X source fromthe EPROM one PEEK at a time, so I knew a new limit switch was beinginstalled. Then I heard Kevin say, "that limit switch is not working"again. I knew then that Kevin was in trouble, because he stoppedtalking. Kevin can make arms work that are missing half the parts. SoI helped by suggesting to Kevin that this arm had probably gotten thebetter of him and that he should perhaps just admit it and give up.This was at 5:00 PM, and the arm had already been placed on the bottomshelf of my workbench and everyone was packing up to go home. Kevdidn't say anything, he just sat there. Then he said, "it's not thatlate, drag that arm back out here." By 8:00 the arm was back in therobot, working for the first time in 15 years, and Kevin was a hero (again).Hotwing spent most of his time scanning the Tiny Basic Users Manual intohis computer, and helping me try to figure things out. He now owns therights to an impressive array of literature about the robot that is thefocal point of his new company. He has the hardware all figured out,but the software, while it is complete and highly usable, is in someneed of sorting. It all still runs on today's operating systems, butwill benefit from some revision, so we are working on that. Shouldn'tbe too long before we have the RB5X running via radio link under thecontrol of Visual C++ programs on a host computer.With this latest mechanical work by Kevin, we now have nothing left tofix. I've been focusing my activities exclusively on programming forthe last year, Kevin has a solid background in programming from his workin flight test, Ted knows a whole lot about the psychology andphysiology of learning, and Hotwing can generally get his Visual Basicsoftware to start up if he clicks the desktop shortcut enough times. Sothe "Robot Ressurectionists" society is about to undergo a paradigmchange to a group dedicated to programming. We spent the last hour ofthe evening discussing what intelligence is, and how a programmer mightprovide a robot with an inquisitive nature and an ability to abstract.Regards,Gary Livick"The December 10, 2005 MeetingWhen you add a wedcam there's a little interaction with the Hero_group...Hotwing *almost* has our webcam up and running (he's had it *almost*working for months now, but a recent breakthrough makes success adistinct possibility this time). When we get it running, we'll send aweb address so you can watch the general confusion at this week's meeting.Ted Spiegel has the most interesting thing going on this week: aweb-based remote control system for his Hero 2000 (running on minetoday) that runs out of a browser window. The local hardware consistsof a WiFi serial LAN (www.datahunter.com) that runs on 12 volts from therobot, a serial cable to plug it into the robot, a Panasonic BL-C30 NetCam sitting on top of it running on the LAN and plugged into the robot's12 volt supply, a LAN access point, and an old Toshiba laptop used as aserver. A friend of Ted's wrote a TCP/IP Java application (called a TCPrelay) for the server. The whole thing is up and operating, and we canall access the Internet and control the robot and view the camera imagesfrom a browser window.Ted doesn't have a web site set up yet for general access, but promisessomething sometime in the future for those with a Hero 2000 appetite anda Hero 1 budget.WebCam may be working:http://69.235.13.151:619If it works, you will have access to the camera controls. There are notlimits to how many people can move the camera at once, so if you see theimage moving when you log on, you might want to just watch.There are four of us here, the fat ones are all Kevin. There was a small incident..... But I got it running...Kevin just had a small problem on his Hero arm trainer -- incandescenceon a circuit board. Plus smoke. Then that smell one gets from hot wireand circuit board fiberglass. Kev is concerned.The arm he has is part of a group of 6 he just received. Kevin and Johnjust bought a lot quantity of various Hero stuff, including the six armtrainers, 18 Hero 1's, and miscellaneous parts. The SoCal Hero's clubhas work to do going into the next century! Gary Livick This picture caught me off gaurd. It is the artwork of the Lordship himself.The January 29th meeting 2006From Gary's announcement If anyone has "questions for the experts," and are not too concerned whether the answers are right or not, start saving them up. The SoCalHero group is going to meet again on the 29th of this month, has a webcam that works on occasion, and we take questions.The "experts" on hand will be Dr. Joe, Ted, Kevin, Hotwing and myself. Kevin's dad will also be here (that would be me). We also tell fortunes, and can provide endless reasons why a robot with human intelligence wouldn't be all that smart.Some clue to what goes on: http://www.hero2000robots.com/9501.htmlIf other Hero people are in the area, or can get plane tickets on that day, all are welcome at the meeting.Gary LivickDuring this meeting there we're a couple of Demo's that took place. One was by Gary showing his robot throwing away a soda can. You may ask "So What" I can too. Well not like this. Gary's Hero 2K is controlled by a desk top through a serial transmitter. A very powerful one. 2k meters is it's range. The program on the desktop poles the Hero 2k for it's sonar data which is processed though a algorithm that maps the room and sends commands to the robot to move it to it's next location. It never runs the same path.... Very Cool!I had a Demo showing the the remote link capabilities of the ER-1 software and hardware. How pictures, sound, commands, and manual control could be accomplished through Wi-Fi remote console control. I can also perform remote programming of behaviors over the same Wi-Fi. I'll be writing a white paper when I've completed interfacing the whole thing to one of my Hero 2k. I'll start relay more details on my web page as I progress. Gary also demo'ed his monster Helicopter. I got a little one last weekend...The Feb meeting 2006SoCalHeroOwners NerdFest today The So Cal group is meeting today, missing Hotwing and Dr. Joe. Thatleaves only three of us to eat, so we didn't run out of pizza thistime. And we've also notice that without them, we have made 2/5 lesserrors....I'm debugging today, and playing with some of my new stuff (more on thatin a minute).Ted didn't bring anything today, just his computer. Sometimes he justlikes to hang around with other Nerds. It's lonely in the world for atechie, being that there are only about 1500 of us world wide who aretotally dedicated.I demonstrated George Warner's C> prompt for Kevin and Ted. They arevery impressed! They had all these questions for me, but I don't evenknow enough on the subject to make something up. George can expect somerequests for information.Kevin arrived with great anticipation. Many will remember that I have alarge-scale Cobra RC Helicopter that I had offered to trade him, and wapecting to make a killing in the exchange. After seeing that itwasn't broken up as badly as I originally thought, and most of the partsare still there, and the engine is frozen up tight but probably fixable,I was able to trade him that one helicopter for several contemporary RCheli models he had, and some fixed wing types as well. I finally gotthe better of Kev on a deal, and, even after several years of being onthe wrong end of deals with him, have pulled way ahead. It feels real good.Got to get back to the lab, as Kev is tearing into the Cobra now. Ineed to get him out of here with it before he discovers anything else ismissing.Gary LivickThe December meeting 2006SoCal Hero Owners group meets Greetings!Yesterday, the local hero owners group in Los Angeles met to work onrobots and discuss politics and cars. We weren't into it long beforediscovering that we don't have any more broken robots. Hotwing has aside business of buying robots that are in serious trouble, fixing themup with parts only he knows where to get, and reselling them, so nothaving anything to fix means business must be slow. Kevin is in thebusiness as well, but mostly buys things with the intent of fixing themand then reselling, but never gets around to selling anything. He has avery large house, and just announced that his house is full, and can'taccept any more robots. I, too, buy robots to fix and sell, but onlywhen it's a partnership with some of the others in the local group. Iwind up fixing them (as in watch while Kevin or Hotwing fixes them) andthen never selling them either. Ted makes just about all meetings, anddoes bring a robot from time to time, but I think his interest is morealong the line of abnormal psychology. Our meetings are a rich sourceof study for that.I just fixed a spare H2K, with battery, extra memory card, latest ROM,upgraded arm and a functioning remote that actually takes a charge. Italso has a charger and the two blue books (technical and user'smanual). If anyone is afraid that they won't get what they want forChristmas, I'll sell it for $2099.50. Shipping will be in a sturdywooden box, and cost around $100. The others also have Hero 1's, moreHero 2000's, H2K arm trainers, a few Rhino Arms (very cool), a couple ofspare 5 1/4" floppy cards with drives, etc. So don't get cheated thisyear for Christmas with yet another tie or tiny bottle of Channel #5,get what you deserve. You can put it on a credit card, and thus not getcaught until next January or February when the bill comes in.Since we are done fixing things, everyone except Hotwing is now wantingto do programming. (I'm not sure what we'll do with him duringmeetings; maybe break something without him knowing so he can fix it.)As previous readers of my drivel will recall, I have my H2K wired to mydesktop via radio link, and run the main operating program from there.Placing the robot in BASIC mode, it executes BASIC commands sent to itfrom the remote, from a terminal program running on a host computer, orsent to it from commands embedded in a C program. I program using theVisual C++ Suite, V6.0, and send commands to, or ask for sensor readingsfrom, the H2K (called '07'). Set up in this way, I have all the speedand capabilities of my desktop machine running Windows executablesprogrammed in console mode. To date, I have the robot able todetermine its location from within a room (that it has previously mappeditself )within 3", and it can navigate from place to place, picking themost efficient route while avoiding objects. I'm showing the others howto do this, and expect them to be up to speed in about 2 years.Having the robot being able to self locate and never get lost is a majorand necessary capability that a robot that is to be free-roaming andtotally autonomous must possess. But to be of any functional value, therobot must be doing tasks that require it to go places and do things.The "doing things" is the hang-up. The robot, as capable as it is(nothing better has appeared on the market since it came out 30 yearsago) is crippled by one missing feature: the ability to see things wellenough that its gripper can manipulate them.To overcome this obstacle, our next task in the group is to integratethe Sharp GP2D12 infrared ranging module via an analog circuit we'llbuild up on the experimenter's cards we all have. The module has arange of 3"-30" with a pencil beam. I have been using these things foryears and find them highly effective for locating and identifying(through software) certain shapes. These are available fromwww.acroname.com (who has never, once, after all the times I've pluggedthem, offered me something free. That's what happens when you aren'tfamous). They also have another IR module that I haven't tested beforethat has a range reported at 8"-60", and that may also have some use. Isee the longer range module being mounted on the front skirt near thefloor (to find cans), and the shorter range module mounted on thegripper so that the relative position of the gripper and can or otherobject to be grasped can be precisely determined.With this development, a free roaming robot set loose in an unknownenvironment can map its area, and then always be able to reconfirm itsposition later as needed, go around searching for and grabbing tennisballs or Coke cans and put them in a box of known size that it hasalready located in some other area. This is not new, but will be doneby the H2K without any modification to the environment for it to do it'sjob.While I do the remote communicating using an RF RS-232 radio set, Tedhas tested and proved out a WIFI setup to do the same thing, including arobot-mounted camera. This adds some other possibilities, consideringRobin Hewitt is getting ready to publish a series of articles in SERVOon how to use a freeware image processing tool for ranging andidentifying video images. This would be much superior to using IRranging modules and software to do the same thing.Cheers, and happy holidays,Gary LivickJanuary Meeting 2007Ted, Hotwing and Kevin are at my house today for our monthly Herogathering. The days events included:Kevin demonstrated a method of completely testing a H2K power supply onthe bench. He used jumper wires and loose components to show how itworked, but is considering putting it all together in a box. With it,he can monitor voltage outputs under load, watch for the proper responsewhen the robot is put into sleep mode or the battery gets low, etc.Kevin also identified a problem on his IO card that was allowing thecurrent surge from firing the Sonar to bleed into the audio amp drivingthe speaker. Turns out the board had a 1000 mf cap missing from theboard, that was in fact never there. Whoever owned that robot in thepast always heard his Sonar running through the speaker!Awhile back, Ted demonstrated using a WIFI to serial converter box thatcan be mounted on the H2K to run the thing remotely from a terminalwindow via the LAN. The box is a Data Hunter, 802.g to serialconverter, and costs around $180. Hotwing has come up with a new deviceslightly larger than a postage stamp, open with SMT devices, that doesthe same thing. The price is less than half the cost of the Data Hunterdevice, and is tiny by comparison. Ted and Hotwing have spent the dayon configuring it. It's been a challenge so far, as it is a highlygeneric component, with about a million different ways to set it up.They are on 461,344 and still going.I spent my day being transferred around the country and to India in anattempt to get my DSL connection changed from a dynamic IP address tostatic so we can have a constant webcam address for y'all to join in ourgroup meetings. We get as many as 1 request a month to reestablish it,as it was highly popular in the past. I finally managed it, so nexttime we will broadcast live from Los Angeles.I also completed what should have been a simple task of determining howto add analog input capability using the experimenter's card. With thisability, highly directional, highly accurate sensors such as these IRranging modules can be mounted on the robot:http://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/R144-GP2Y0A02YK.html andhttp://www.acroname.com/robotics/parts/R48-IR12.html. With them, youcan actually locate things accurately enough to pick them up with thegripper, do a better job of obstacle avoidance, etc. I'll be buildingthis next week, and have already ordered several of each sensor.I hear swearing, so I better go see what is going on.Gary LivickThat's about it. We had a meeting in Feb 2007 which consist of robots, guitars, flutes, and wine. nothing else to report. Or..... No comments from Gary...April's Meeting 2007Group,Great meeting here yesterday, and certainly eclectic. Ted, Hotwing and I started the day, with Kevin coming over quite late. ( A little note why I was late. I was visiting a friend in the hospital. He had just found out he had leukemia CML to be exact. He's stable now and at home. I had AML almost four years ago and I'm still good. Thank God and smart people for Modern Medicine. ) I think the only one doing Hero stuff was me. We got a long way on a lot of things, though. I got my radio moved inside per Kent's instructions and pictures, and other than a wiring error in my internal serial cable that looks and works well. Hotwing brought over his brand new Sherline miniature mill, and I helped him with the basics of machining. He picked it up right away, and spent the whole day creating a mountain of chips. It was fun to see him make the typical machinist mistakes, like having the vice move on him, having the part come out of the vice, having the cutter drop down out of the collet slowly, and then taking that one cleanup cut that is .10 too much. Anyone that machines stuff does all of that, Hotwing managed to have every typical problem in one day, but he finished the day with a sheet metal strap forming tool that he can use to make parts for the RB5X.Ted and Hotwing got the Apple IIe connected to my Rhino arm, with all the right software to run it. That effort has been going on for months, as Hotwing rounded up the Apple (for something else I think, that it didn't work for, so now it lives here), the software came with a bulk purchase of surplus robots awhile back, the books for it came from somewhere else, etc. They are now only stuck with getting the serial output card in the Apple set for the right BAUD. In the old days, you had to set the switches, you couldn't just call up the control panel and set it. And of course we don't have the docs on how to do that, so the project will have to await the next meeting.Kevin is working very hard to try and get everything he needs to recompile the 2.03 monitor/operating system in the H2K. I had what may be part of the puzzle, and spend some time copying disks. It turns out that 2.03 was created by multiple vendors using different compilers, all of which are obsolete. Kevin's current challenge is to try to understand what they all were. Next he has to find those compilers and the source code, then find and purchase old computers that they will run on. This is all 1985 stuff. Ultimately, the group wants to rewrite some sections of the code to change the startup sequence, etc.Ted assembled a system he has been developing for some time. As best as I can describe it, it is an automotive mounted, solar cell charged, gell cell powered shortwave radio. Before he left, it was running, and he had fancy instruments showing insertion loss and VSWR on a meter, and he was talking to someone far away (like in Long Beach). A great time was had by all, I think, and most certainly by me.GaryApril's 2008 meeting SoCal Hero Owner's group in session Most of the local SoCal group is meeting today in the brand newrobotorium off the back of my house. It actually fits all of us, and isa welcome relief from the previous room we had in my house, whichsuffered from invasion by my storage-seeking wife over the years.Hotwing is working on a VEX controller conversion for one of his RB-5robots. We just ran it around outside on the proving grounds (patio),and it works really well. Kevin is fixing a Hero 2000 arm trainer,swearing, and not making much progress outside of going into the kitchento wash parts from time to time.I spent all morning finding a very specific capacitor to fix my Tecscope, ultimately finding the right style, but needing two of them ofthe wrong value which when wired in series will provide the correctcapacitance. Now I'm wiring up an experimenter's card to doanalog-to-digital conversion. Interestingly, there is no evidence onthe Internet that it has ever been done before, although George Warnerseems to have done it at some point in time.There is a new Sharp IR ranging module out that provides very accurate,narrow beam range information out to 20 feet. The output of the sensoris analog, so to use it on the Hero 2000 we need an analog input port.Once this is wired and tested, the Sharp sensor will be mounted on therobot wrist, and by controlling the direction the wrist is pointingwe'll be able to detect objects with high accuracy and resolutionanywhere around the robot. That will enable complex behaviors notcurrently possible, such as locating a beer on a coffee table anddelivering it to a thirsty human. The sensor itself is only $13 or so,and the chips for the A/D converter total around the same thing, so it'spretty cheap considering the paradigm increase in capability.I'm trying to sell a Rhino arm to Kevin, who is saying, "Well, you knowthey aren't worth much. The are all over EBAY." I checked -- therearen't any on EBAY. There haven't even been any listed recently,they're rare as mastodons. I 'll have to collect my wits if I hope toget half what it's worth out of him. I need the money for parts for asupercomputer, based on an Intel QX9650, I'm currently building incompetition with Ted, another SoCal club member. We plan to use themfor advanced artificial intelligence work, such as being able to tell aBud Light from a Molsen Gold by the sound made when opening thecontainer -- really important stuff. So, gotta go!Gary L. A good picture of Gary...   for(var i=0; i |
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