Monthly Archives: June 2016

minimalistic way of building a 2 DoF servo “cluster”

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as you know i love to design minimalistic mechanics and always try to simplify my previous designs. many of the things in trashbot 6 have been redesign to reduce weight and the number of parts.

one study of reducing complexity was the robot foot made from two servos and coat hanger wire and it actually received quite some attention.

with the progress made on trashbot 6, i also wanted to have a compact, yet lightweight way of connecting to parts with two servos so that these two parts could move in two dimension: the shoulders and the feet. Continue reading →

first “unit test” in programming an arduino mini pro

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so, after i’ve connected the head and its servos to trashbot 6, it’s now time to work on the actual control of the neck servos. unfortunately, the servo-board connected to the raspberry is not sufficient to control the neck servos since the body is already using 15 servos and the controller only has space for 16.

so i thought to use an arduino mini pro for this since it has 6 PWM outputs that can control six servos (people have noted that the output pin doesn’t necessarily have to be capable of PWM to control a servo). Continue reading →

deconstructing the minoru 3d stereo webcam

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i’m thinking about adding stereo vision to trashbot as the raspberry pi has enough oomph to do some kind of computer vision and it seems that open cv supports this camera.

there’s not too many “3d” cams out there that actually fullfill my requirements:

  • cheap (<100€), so i can buy more when killing one
  • 3d or at least two cameras
  • strippable
  • supported by raspbian et al.
  • small enough to fit a robot’s head and
  • light (as the higher up the hardware in the bot the more it will impact stability when walking)

Continue reading →

my first self-made usb plug

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for trashbot 6 i planned to change the arduino nano into a raspberry pi 2. i also moved the board below the hips as luckily, the three mgr 996 servos of the hip are as wide as the raspberry pi:

raspberry pi 2 and the hip servos

but as you can see on the lower left (where the edimax wifi plug is inserted), the usb ports are pretty much flush with the outer servos, i.e. the attached legs will not leave too much space for usb plugs. Continue reading →

trashbot 6, quick video walk through

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most of this work has been done over christmas, but only now i found the time to at least do a quick tour around the bot. here are some highlights:

  • arduino nano changed to raspberry pi 2 & wifi
  • moved controller from back to hips
  • added 16 channel i2c servo controller
  • new foot construction adding an additional degree of freedom (DoF)
  • reconstructed legs that are lighter and now take up new batteries
  • power distribution board including i2c current / voltage measurement
  • accelerometer and gyro sensor (i2c) moved to “belly” instead of neck
  • added arms with shoulders (two DoF)
  • changed spine, reduced complexity
  • removed head for now (being redesigned)