Someday, the strength of men will fail...

...and the robots will take over,

    but this is not that day!

actual interesting commentary here:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/darpa-robotics-challenge-robots-falling

blogodex = {"idx" : ["robotics", "DARPA"]};

Red Rover Notes

Here's my take on the Red Rover. Original article and hackaday.  Kudos to Rick Winscott for such a cute and ingenious design!!

A Tale of Two Robots

Getting ready to put together another electronics class.  This one will be themed around robots, so I'm looking for likely candidates.

Here's Popular Mechanic's Build Your First Robot project. Points to more details here.  They're estimating about $100, but I think it can be pulled off for less.

And via Hackaday, the Red Rover.  It's tiny, 3D-printed, and uses rubber bracelets for treads.  May be a pretty cheap way to go!

I've got parts coming in for both, so I'll make a page for each of these and put collected information there.

Simple GPS Guide Autonomous Robot

Thulana Vimukthi is an engineering student in Sri Lanka.  He just uploaded an autonomous rover to GarageLab.

It looks like a nice platform for learning some basics due to it's simplicity.  I've been contemplating some time of rover, and I think this might be the one.

Here's the video, which I had some trouble embedding.  Click through the link below for a better view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=JYBHSKJWsCw

Quadrature Encoding Function

Oddbot has the perfect example here.  He ORs the A and B inputs so that one line can control the interrupt.  And more here.

A whole lot of Arduino and Robotics links!

Getting ready to teach an Arduino class, so have a lot of links prepping for that.  Instead of giving the impression that this blog has forgotten about flying, I'm posting a bunch of miscellania here.

Timer Stuff

• timer1 library. This library is a collection of routines for configuring the 16 bit hardware timer called Timer1 on the ATmega168/328. There are 3 hardware timers available on the chip, and they can be configured in a variety of ways to achieve different functionality.
• SO query with a couple of answers.

AVR Programming

• Stanford notes.
• Hackaday tutorial.
• Quick Ref. check out alphabetic command and ports.

Arduino Tutorials

• Official Tutorials
• All About Circuits

Clickwheels and Diskdrive Spinners

• some forum post.
• Instructable: HDDJ: Turning an old hard disk drive into a rotary input device (video)
• code: Interfacing › HDDJ:hard drive as scrollwheel/turtable-like input

LarryBot

• larryBot – Arduino robot versions 0.1 to 0.5 lessons learned
• Obstacle avoidance Arduino robot – build your own larryBot (this one with tank treads)
• Control a DC motor with Arduino and L293D chip
• Arduino – Sonic range finder with SRF05
• Arduino: Controlling the Robot Arm

Motors

• Micro GearmotorBlocks
• Tamiya 70097 Twin-Motor Gearbox Kit
• Tamiya Gearbox Gear Ratio Comparison

DS1307 RTC Module

• ebay listing with some good information
• Arduino library to control the DS1307 RTC

Calculators

• Resistor Calculator for LEDs
• LEDCalculator.net
• ledcalc.com

Docs

• Atmel Reference

An interesting GPS guided vehicle.

From LetsMakeRobots, an interesting writeup with lots of code and explanation.

Cubelets: "smart robotics construction cubes"

A coworker just forwarded this to me, and it's way too cool not to mention here.

Cubelets are a toy robotics kit.  The modular pieces snap together with magnets; different modules do different things.  Their video, for example, shows a robot made of three blocks: battery, drive, and sensor.  Stack them together, move your hand towards it, and it moves away.  Neat!

It's in preproduction, and they've delivered a first batch for people to test.  Their standard kit includes these 20 cubes:

Action Blocks: 2 Drive, 1 Rotate, 1 Speaker, 1 Flashlight, 1 Bar Graph
Sense Blocks: 1 Knob, 1 Brightness, 2 Distance, 1 Temperature
Think/Utility Blocks: 2 Inverse, 1 Minimum, 1 Maximum, 1 Battery, 2 Passive, 2 Blocker