In honor of Robot Day on Make: Blog, I've posted my "Rules for Roboticists" from my 2004 book Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building. It's a playful list of operating principles, rules of thumb, and words o' wisdom about bot building. The piece is accompanied by robot scientist "trading cards" illustrated by Mark Frauenfelder for the book.

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Aside: Rumor has it that BEAM (and Wow Wee Toys) robot inventor Mark Tilden has been known to put all manner of bio-matter (chicken and other animal bones and bits) into his dishwasher so that he can clean them thoroughly for study of their mechanics, and one might even assume, incorporation into disturbing SRL-esque bio-mechs.

Aside: This is completely unrelated to robots, but it neatly illustrates our fourth rule. Many years ago, a friend of mine, a fabric artist, entered a beginner’s fabric weaving contest. She rented a small loom, learned how to weave, and decided to weave a seersucker blouse. Because she was new to weaving, she didn’t know that you “couldn’t” hand-weave seersucker (which is comprised of alternating puckered and smooth stripes). She had a devil of a time doing it, but she thought it was just because she was new to weaving. The judges were stunned. Needless to say, she won the contest, and the grand prize, a gorgeous room-sized Swedish loom that was the size of a small sailing vessel.

6. A roboticist must be methodical and patient (like any scientist).

Other Robot Projects on Street Tech

• Zach Debord's Twin-Engine Solarroller
• Gareth's Coat Hanger Walker
• Gareth's Mousey the Junkbot Page
• Mousey the Junkbot MAKE Project PDF
• Gareth's MAKE Vol. 8 Pummer piece PDF (with Zach's Pummers)
• Solarbotics Herbie the Mousebot Review
• Solarbotics Turbot Kit Review

  And you might also want to check out the companion site to my book, The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots.

  [Robot illustration by Mark Frauenfelder]

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Check out these incredibly cool solarrollers posted to the MAKE Flickr Pool. This one's built in an old wireless phone chassis. Love the use of gears as wheels.

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[Read on...]

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While on his site, make sure to take a look at the gas-powered R/C helicopter he outfitted with four model rocket missiles. A pyromaniacal kid's wet dream!

Thanks, Patti!

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Scientists are making progress on neural devices that can translate the thoughts of a paralyzed person into driving action for a prosthetic device.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said Wednesday that they've developed an algorithm for a neural prosthetic aid that can link an individual's brain activity to the person's intentions; and then translate that intention into movement.

Of course, other scientists have already done that, and built prototypes for neural brain-to-machine devices that can work for animals or humans. But each team has taken a different approach to the problem, such as developing algorithms for measuring activity in a specific brain region, or measuring them through EEGs vs. optical imaging.

MIT said that it has developed a unified algorithm that can work within the parameters of these different approaches. Lakshminarayan "Ram" Srinivasan, lead author of a paper on the subject, said MIT's new graphical models are applicable no matter what measurement technique is used.

"We don't need to reinvent a new paradigm for each modality or brain region," he said in a statement.

Still, he said, the algorithm isn't perfect, nor the final solution to solving what is a difficult problem. "Translating an algorithm into a fully functioning clinical device will require a great deal of work, but also represents an intriguing road of scientific and engineering development for the years to come," according to MIT.

MIT will publish a paper on the subject in the October edition of the Journal of Neurophysiology.

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You may have seen my posts on MAKE: Blog about the Tomy i-Sobot, the US$300 mini-humanoid that looks pretty damn full-featured for the dough. The English version of the i-Sobot site went live today. On it, you can see videos of the bot, how its button-sequence programming works (very similar to Robosapien), read some tech specs, etc. Some interesting tidbits, such as the fact that the bot is 6-1/2" tall, has two gyroscopic sensors, the gearboxes on the 12 servomotors have metal gears, and that the run-time on the included NMH batteries is an hour (which probably means less than that in real-world operation). The bot has three CPU chips for general control, voice recognition, and motor control. No other details on these, as far as I know.

This looks like a decent robot that does the lion's share of what other humanoid bots can do that cost three or four times as much. Can't wait to see what sorts of hacks and mods people come up with.

Thanks, Robert!

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...and you will too when you see him rolling on the floor in hysterics (at least I did). Really funny. Impressive movements, body expressions. The rowdy robot in question is a Speecys SPC-101C. You can find out more about "him" at Robots-Dreams.

Thanks, Robert!

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One of my favorite BEAM builders, Harold Ilano, has posted a new project on his site. It's an awesome little bugbot he dubbed Mercury (being a light-seeker that wants to be close to the sun). The design is based on a circuit by BEAM whiz Wilf Rigter, using a single 74AC/HC240 chip to create a reversing photovore (the 74*240 is the same chip family that I used -- the HCT -- in my single-motor walker from my robot book).

I love the way Harold always builds on established BEAM circuits. Here, he's made his photovore with two tactile sensors (Wilf's had one), added a dark-detecting behavior (with two dark-activated LED "predator" eyes), and a stop and go behavior (which makes him seem more organic), all with the single 74*240 control chip.

The Mercury is made from scavenged pieces from a Playstation (including the two motors), a Li-Poly 3.6V cell phone battery, and some misc analog components. Looking at the numerous pics and videos on his site, you might get the impression that this was an easy build, but getting that much "behavior" out of so few components involves a bit of electronic origami. Harold says it took weeks of long hours every day to finally get it all working smoothly. Sheesh. Maybe I don't have the patience to become a real BEAM master. No worries. I'm more than happy to sit at the feet of guys like Wilf and Harold, and marvel at what they do (and write glowingly about it in cyberspace).

More pics after the jump...

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"Oh, waiter, there's a bolt in my soup." According to a piece on Spiegel Online, a Munich restaurant has gotten rid of a waitstaff (in a country known for its crappy service) and replaced it with an automated food delivery system. Patrons order by computers at their tables and a rail system that works on gravity (the kitchen is above the restaurant) sends meals directly to the tables. No word on what you do when your food is cold, or you get the wrong item, or have other complaints. I'm guessing ejection seats are involved.

[Via Wired Gadgets]

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Artist Ben Rollman, who's been involved in the 100 Artist Project, 700 Things, 700 Robots and a number of other online drawing projects, is now offering robot portraits for a dirt-cheap price of 10 PayPal'd dollars. Nice work, too. The top one's called "Battlebot Vulture." The second one is "Sammy 12-Switch." He did these two for Simone of Suicidebots/ RoboGames. You not only get a piece of art for your tenner, Ben also records a video of him drawing the portrait and uploads it to YouTube. I'm so squirting over my ten creds!

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Check out these amazing vids, pics and design details of RunBot, an adaptive, dynamic bipedal walker that learns from its mistakes and changes its gait to adapt to different environmental conditions.

[Via BotJunkie]

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Okay, so it's a robot pill bug, not a tick, and it's only a concept, not an actuality. But researchers at University of Madgeburg-Stendal in Germany think that this type of an armored design, based on a "pill bug" millipede, could work in patrolling a forest, with the bot using its heat sensors to sniff out and put out fires as they start. And if the robo-bug gets in trouble, it can curl up in a protective ball like its bio-brethren to protect itself from intense heat. Interesting... And as Engadget points out, in between fires, teams of these armored ticks could entertain themselves by scaring the living daylights out of woodland creatures (and campers).

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Here's a fairly well-documented rebraining of the Robosapien, done by students and teachers at University of Beira Interior in Portugal. They replaced the existing MCU with a Texas Instruments MSP430. The docs go through identifying the current hardware components and what it all does and then the rebraining. I've wondered how difficult such a thing would be. It doesn't look trivial, but it's clearly doable. They now plan to add a wireless comms capability, a digital signal processor (DSP) for handling voice commands, and to develop a Windows app for controlling the bot.

[Via Make]

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PC Magazine has a review of the Roboquad, the new four-legged bot from WowWee Robotics (US$99). They gave it three out of five stars. One thing they didn't like was the fact that the programs you sequence through the remote are erased on power-down. Sounds like a hack in the making to me!

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Jerome Demers is the designer of the single-motor walking machine featured in Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots. I've been a big fan of Jerome's ingenious designs ever since I discovered the walker, but his sites (and he's had several) were either in French or site components were frequently broken (or both).

So I was thrilled to discover that he's started putting his bot projects on Instructables. His first is so cool. It's a two motor/two switch (SPDT) "Beetle Robot" that has the switches/motors cross-wired so that the switches trigger the opposite motors to reverse while that switch is being depressed, creating a basic obstacle-avoidance behavior, with no chip brain of any kind (analog or digital). This is the simplest type of "real" robot (with a sensor-(processor)-actuator chain) that one can build.

Let's hope that Jerome puts up more how-tos for building his bots. Instructables is a much bigger and better platform for his wonderful ideas.

[Via Make]

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If you haven't visited Greg Brotherton's site, Broton, you should definitely check it out. He's an amazing sculptor who creates robots, rayguns, Frankensteinian operating slabs, and other retro-futuro artifacts. He incorporates a lot of antique appliances in his work, like Kirby vacs and Sunbeam mixers, to create a unique Deco echo of a future that never happened.

Greg recently updated his site, and among other things, now sells signed limited edition prints, posters, and T-shirts. Above is an image of his Eris robot, being constructed in his studio, that he was kind enough to send us.

Thanks, Greg!

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Man, do I ever have a face for radio! At least I sound reasonably coherent, which is a bonus.

BTW: In building this project, Bre experienced the dreaded "max headroom" problem, i.e., not allowing enough room above the circuit wiring to be able to screw the top of the mouse back on when you're done. He also used solid core wiring throughout. It's best to use stranded 24-guage inside and only solid core for the eyestalk wires. And even with stranded, you still want to make sure that you keep your wire lengths as short as possible. When I built the Mousey I'm holding in the above photo, I wasn't as mindful of wire-length as I should've been, and when I was done, I couldn't get the top back on. I had to re-route some of the wires to the sides of the LM386 chip and the relay to free up enough room. A royal pain.

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More Mousey links on Street Tech.

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One of the combat robot folks told me there's quite the arms race going on between the robots and the lethality of their weapons and the integrity of the robot arena. This is driven home in the footage of the appropriately-named Last Rites shearing a 55-pound steel blade off of Brutality and flinging it across the Arena, punching a hole in one of the polycarbonate panels. Ouch. Maybe I *didn't* want to get that close to the action.

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I know you're probably sick of seeing Mousey-related posts here. This is the last one, I promise (until the Faire, anyway). This a shot of the bots we're taking with us, posing in front of the Solarbotics parts bundles we'll be using in the Workshop.

The motors, battery snap, and SPDT toggle switch will be what's in the car bundle, those components plus everything else, will be in the full Mousey the Junkbot bundle. The full bundle includes a button/momentary switch, the same kind as is found in a mouse, but with a little metal lever over the button, which makes it SO much easier to attach the bumper. The kit also includes two IR optical sensors, which are a nice backup/alternative to the IR detectors salvaged from an analog mouse.

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I'm going to be running “Building Mousey the Junkbot” workshops. Actually what most people will likely be building is “My Mousey the Car” (shown here), a quicker, simpler version, with two DC motors, a battery/batt snap, and a toggle switch. There's going to be a zillion things going on at the Faire. I suspect a lot of people won't want to take up all their time at this one event. So, they can build the car version there and then add the brains and sensors at home. We'll have two parts bundles available, a car kit, and one with the parts to make the full Mousey.

We'll have plenty of dead computer mice on hand, but to further save time, I strongly suggest that folks bring an already prepped mouse. To help with that, I've created this brief tutorial. With an already gutted, prepared mouse, all you'll have to do is solder in the electronics.

Here are some other Mousey-related resources:

Mousey Pages on Street Tech.

Mousey the Junkbot FAQ I just created this doc in preparation for the Faire. It's the collected Q/A wisdom from several years of Mousey building.

The free Mousey project PDF from Make Vol. 2

The Mousebot Revisited tips and tricks companion piece on Instructables:

Mousey the Junkbot is a TV star!. Mousey on The Colbert Report with Mark Frauenfelder.

Hope to see some of you at the Faire!

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This spring and summer, DC-area art galleries, museums, and art orgs are celebrating the Color Field Movement of the '50s and '60s (think: Motherwell, Rothko, Stella), and specifically, the Washington Color School (Gene Davis, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis), which put DC on the significant art movements map. As part of this celebration, the wonderful Curator's Office micro-gallery is showing an amazing installation piece by one of Street Tech's own, Alberto Gaitán.

The piece, called Remembrancer, consists of three net-connected robot painters. As data feeds -- one local, one national, and one global -- pour into the gallery, they're transposed into art, as paint is deposited onto three monochromatic panels, and into dynamic musical compositions, via three wall-mounted speakers.

The gallery catalog sheet describes some of the ideas behind Remembrancer:

Remembrancer confronts the loss inherent in transformation, the distortions introduced by the medium onto which--and the assumptions in effect when--memory is transcribed, the inevitable simplification of phenomena that accompanies acts of observation, and the spacial, temporal and cultural resonance of events.

That latter bit of "spacial, temporal and cultural resonance of events" was driven home when the Virgina Tech killings happened two days after the show's opening. Ominously, the local canvas is colored red. Overwhelmed by data traffic on that day, it squeezed out two guillotine-like triangles, dripping gore. Perhaps a happier "accident" can be found on the blue, national, panel where its proximity to the gallery's air conditioning vent has made all of the paint deposits shiver nervously on their way down.

For the geek artists (and engineers) in the audience, the mechanisms that render the art might be as interesting, and maybe as poignant, as the art itself. Alberto used the Make Controller, an iconic object of the current anyone-can-play high-tech/DIY craze, "canvases" gridded off like geeky graph paper, beautifully printed on Komatex/Sintra, an expanded PVC material popular in robotics, peristaltic pumps that look like they were lifted from an OR, and paint-laden "carboys" suspended from the ceiling, that look like they might be from the recovery room. Gorgeous little robot carts complete the tech, with precision-machined gears and rack and pinion drive mechanics, stepper motors, and segmented cable guides that look both serpentine and like something from a LEGO Mindstorms set. As the gallery's curator, Andrea Pollan, so perfectly put it: It's "Frankenstein lab meets Walter Reed hospital room."

The robots lay down their paint nozzles at the end of this week. The completed work will be up until May 26th. If you're in DC, you should definitely stop by and see it. The Curator's Office is at 1515 14th St. NW.

Read the Washington Post review here.
Read the WP Express piece here.
Alberto's Remembrancer Flickr set can be found here.
Find out more about the ColorField.remix here.
After the jump, see more pics of the piece, including the equipment table and the Breadboard (with call outs). The Breadboard, the installation's control electronics, was built on an actual breadboard ($2 from Target).

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[Via Make]

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This means that all of my robot articles from Make are now available online (links to PDFs):
Mousey the Junkbot
Pummer, Dude!
Two BEAMbots: Trimet and Solarroller

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If you're coming to the Maker Faire and are going to take my Building Mousey the Junkbot Workshop, to save you time on your bot build (and therefore give you more time to enjoy the Faire), I recommend you eviscerate your own mouse to bring a prepped one, ready to install its new innards. Just to be clear, we're talking about a mouse of the computer kind, not of the biological variety (smart ass). I've written a short guide to Mouse Dissection which should tell you all you need to know.

See you at the Faire! It's shaping up to be one hell of a nerdfest.

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This document was put together for the 2007 Bay Area Maker Faire(May 19, 20). If you're coming to the Faire to take my Building Mousey the Junkbot Workshop, you can save some build time (giving you more time to enjoy the Faire) by bringing an already-prepared, recycled computer mouse. Here are the instructions you need to do that prep. We will have more dead mice at the Faire and we'll have two parts bundles for sale: one to build “My Mousey the Car,” a non-robotic, much simpler, version of Mousey, and one to build the full Mousey the Junkbot, as seen in my book, the Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots, MAKE Vol. 2, and as a “special guest” on The Colbert Report!

Tools Needed:
Screw Driver(s) (likely small phillips head)
Dremel Tool (w/ cut-off wheel)
Shop Goggles or Safety Glasses (a must!)
Dust Mask (ditto)
Soldering Iron (full Mousey only)
De-solder Wick or De-soldering Pump (full Mousey only)

To create My Mousey the Car or Mousey the Junkbot, you first need an empty computer mouse case to house your cute little Frankenmouse creation. For the Car version (which includes little more than two DC motors, a power switch, and a 9V battery), you can use any mouse, mechanical or optical. For the full Mousey the Junkbot, with its LM386 brain, IR sensors, bump switch, and reverser circuit, you need an older, analog/mechanical mouse (you know, the kind with that always-grody rubber ball underneath). You likely have one of these in a junk drawer someplace.

In selecting your mouse, you want one that's as symmetrical as possible and fairly roomy inside. You can use “lopsided” mice, such as the popular IntelliMouse from Microsoft, with the curved body. It's just a trickier to build and to get the motors aligned and the weight balanced, so if you have a choice, choose symmetry.

You also want to do a little planning ahead to see how everything is going to fit. For the Car, this is no big deal. Any mouse should have plenty of space. For the robot version, this is a factor. Getting everything inside will be a challenge with a mouse of any size and design. Below is a rough layout for a typical arrangement for Mousey the Junkbot components. You'll need to fit all of these inside your case (tho they don't have to go in the same places). Unscrew the mouse halves. Many mice have screws under the little rubber glide pads, so check there if your attachment screws aren't obvious.

With your proper mouse selected, you're ready to remove everything that's not needed inside. First, remove the printed circuit board (PCB). This is usually attached only by the scroll-wheel mount (if your mouse had a wheel), so snapping the wheel usually frees the board. Removed the cable, scroll-wheel assembly, and PCB. Save the PCB. You'll need parts from it (if you're building the full Mousey).

Now you should have nothing in the mouse but the encoder wheels and all of the plastic mounts for the various components and for attaching the two body halves. Get out your Dremel tool and a cut-off wheel. You should absolutely wear eye protection for this, and a paper filter mask. The plastic dust is nasty business.

If you've spec'd out where the parts will go, you'll have some idea of what you can get away with leaving in. You'll need a place in the top half for the toggle switch tail. If the screw post is in that vicinity, you'll have to remove it. No biggie. You can hold Mousey together with a piece of tape when he's finished. We recommend taking out everything that's inside, just to give yourself as much room to work as possible.

When you're done, a clean as a whistle bottom body half should look something like this:

Now you need to cut notches for your motors. If you're doing this dissection in preparation for my workshop, you won't have the two Solarbotics RM1A motors to use as your guide. You need to cut two tabs out of the sides of the mouse bottom. Make them at least 3/4” wide and all the way to the floor of the mouse bottom half. That should give you plenty of mounting room. Just so you know, the Solarbotics motors are approx 5/8” wide by just shy of ½” tall. We've found that placing the motors forward of the halfway mark (forward-to-back) is a good spot in terms of overall parts placement and robot performance. Here's where we tend to mount ours:

Once you cut the motor notches, if you're just building the Car, you're done with the bottom half. The only other thing you have to do is drill a hole in the top half for the toggle switch. The photo below shows you the basic placement. You want to drill a hole ~1/4” wide.

If you're building the full Mousey, the other thing that needs to be cut in the bottom half is the notch for the bump switch package. See the Motor Placement image above for the basic location. You'll be using one of the button switches from the mouse as a bump sensor that'll engage Mousey's reverser circuit. You want the opening to be about 5/8” wide by about 3/8” high. The package itself is (likely) 1/2” wide by 1/4” tall. Don't worry too much about these cuts. You can adjust them as you test-fit the motors and the switches.

If you're building the full Mousey the Junkbot, you'll also need to remove one button switch and the two infrared EMITTERS from the mouse's printed circuit board. See the illustration below for the likely location of these components. Your PCB may vary slightly.

In this drawing, you are looking at a top-down view of the PCB, with the front end of the mouse at the top of the image. The encoder wheels aren't used in this project, they're just pointed out for orientation purposes. Once you've located your parts, get out your soldering iron and de-soldering tools. De-solder the pins on these components and bring them with you to the Faire, along with your prepped mouse halves.

BTW: You want to save (and bring) the two plastic pieces that make up the top surface of the two mouse buttons. They likely came apart as you eviscerated your mouse case. You can follow your own creativity as you build, but when I designed Mousey, one of the things I wanted to do was make it look as much like an un-altered mouse as possible. I'd seen some other robots in mouse cases, but the top of the mouse usually didn't fit or it had been so altered it didn't look mouse-like anymore. I wanted Mousey to look like your garden variety computer mouse that had somehow transformed itself into a robot, chewed off its own cord, and made a grand escape from its computer servitude. So, when the build is complete, you can glue the button parts back on your case to minimize the “damage” to the mouse formfactor.

BTW 2.0: You'll also need to drill holes in the mouse top to snake the eyestalk sensor eyes through, but you should save that until you've installed everything else inside the case and know where the stalks should go.

Resources:
* Mousey the Junkbot's Webpage
* Free Mousey Project PDF from MAKE Vol. 2
* Mousebot Revisited, Additional Mousey Building Tips and Tricks on Instructables.
* My Soldering Tutorial
Information about the 2007 Bay Area Maker Faire

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In preparation for my Mousey workshops at the Maker Faire, I've put together a Mousey FAQ with all of the Q/A that's crossed my transom in the last couple of years. Above are captures from the video of Mousey (and Mark Frauenfelder) on The Colbert Report.

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Here is the collected questions and answers I've processed, via email and online discussion, for the past several years related to Mousey the Junkbot, the light-seeking robot made from a computer mouse I featured in my book, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots, and in the Mousey project in MAKE Vol. 2. If you have additional questions, feel free to ask them in the “Projects” topic of the Building Robots board in Shop Talk, our conferencing area.

Image of Make:Philly Mousebot Contest Entries, Courtesy Jef Wilkins.

Q: Are there other resources related to Mousey, besides this website? A: You betcha. Since the publication of my book, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots, Mousey has taken off (so to speak). He seems to have his own career now. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't soon have his own agent. As I write this, the original Mousey just showed up at my front door. He was coming back from a “showing” at a Chicago art museum, representing MAKE (in an exhibit about the history of DIY). Here are some of the other places you can find Mousey materials:

* He was in MAKE Vol. 2. He even made the cover! MAKE made the Mousey project article into a free PDF download. You can get it here. It's everything you need to build our favorite mousebot. (Altho it does contain a slight error in the circuit design – keep reading for the fix.)

* After the MAKE issue came out, a builder, named Jake, put up a series of building tips called Mousebot Revisted. If you're building Mousey, you should definitely check this out before starting your build.

* Mousey has quite the fanbase on Flickr. Various groups, such as Make:Philly, and individuals. have built their own mousebots and photo-documented their efforts. Search on “mousebot” and “mousey” in the MAKE pool to scoop up the Lion's share of them.

Phillip Torrone's Mouseys in the MAKE Flickr Pool.

* Make:Philly is an organization, inspired by MAKE magazine, that holds regular gatherings where members get together to build stuff. One of their meet-ups included a Mousey-building contest. One of the organizers, Josh Kopel, created a PDF page of hints, tips, and a re-done, corrected circuit digram. He also shows you how you can add a second bump switch, either a second whisker on the front, or a bumper in the back. Here's a link to the PDF.

* Mousey the Junkbot: As seen on TV! On March 6th, Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of MAKE, and the illustrator for my book, was on The Colbert Report. He brought several projects from the magazine with him. One of them was a Mousey. Everything was going just swell, until Stephen Colbert drove Mousey off of the desk, where it broke into many pieces. Much hilarity ensued. After Mousey plummeted to his doom, Colbert quipped: “You built, not a robotic mouse, but a robotic lemming,” and looking offstage to his producer, sheepishly, he asked: “Is that in our budget? Can we replace robots?” The whole segment was really fun. You can see it and some follow-up blog discussion on MAKE's blog.

Mousey the Junkbot on The Colbert Report, with Stephen Colbert and Make's Mark Frauenfelder

Mousey started off life with a different name, Herbie. The original LM386-based circuit upon which Mousey was based was designed by Randy Sargent, then a student at MIT. It was originally designed as a line-follower (the two light sensors designed to keep themselves on either side of a black line on the floor – and therefore the bot following the line). Soon, builders modded this original design to follow light instead. Dave Hrynkiw of Solarbotics used a light-following Herbie in his book Junkbots, Bugbots and Bots on Wheels. Then, I created the Mousey the Junkbot version, encasing the Herbie circuit in a mouse case, and created the eyestalk light sensors. Now Solarbotics has further evolved the Herbie/Mousey robot family with Herbie the Mousebot, a wonderful kit that ingeniously uses three electrically=connected PCBs to create a mouse body, of the bio-rodentia variety. It has two whisker sets on the front and an optional clear LED on the back so you can get one Herbie to chase another. It's a really fun kit to make. Here's my review of it.

A gorgeous example of a Herbie robot, using Sargent's original circuit, built here by Grant McKee. In an illustration in Make Vol. 2, this was identified as the original Herbie. It isn't. I've never seen a photo of Herbie 1.0

BTW: While we're looking into Mousey's family tree, check out this rarity. It's an image of a precursor to the Solarbotics's Herbie the Mousebot kit.

And if you don't think mousebots are supposed to be lively, check out this video of the kit beta in action.

Q: Are there any significant mistakes in the instructions given in your book or the MAKE article that I should know about before I get started? A: Yes, a couple . A builder, Gareth Adams, found a mistake in the subcircuit for adding sensitivty to Mousey's light sensors. Wilf Ritger, creator of this circuit hack, pointed out on the Yahoo! BEAM group that the circuit as I have it in my book, and as it appeared in Dave's Junkbots book (which is where I got it) is incorrect. The same mistake appears in the MAKE Vol. 2 version of the project. The current circuit diagram shows the correct wiring. PLEASE NOTE: This means that the breadboarding illos and photos in the book and on the site are also incorrect. Please refer to the circuit diagram when breadboarding. If you've already built Mousey with the incorrect connections, it shouldn't be a big deal to reconnect them as shown. Thanks to Gareth (not me, the other one) for finding this bug. ALSO: In the book version of the circuit diagram, the orientation of the IR eye sensors got switched around in the illustration. If you just follow the diagram above, you should be okay. As far as I know, there are no other significant mistakes in the Mousey book chapter or the MAKE project. Any other issues, corrections or improvements are dealt with below.

Q: Can you post a Parts Lists and suggest places to buy the parts online?
A: Here is the complete parts lists for the Mousey project. Solarbotics has a parts bundle for Mousey. You can get it here. The lists below include the individual Solarbotics parts numbers and numbers for other suppliers (on the few items Solarbotics does not carry). Here are the suppliers' Web addresses:

Solabotics.com
Jameco.com
RadioShack.com

Mousey the Junkbot Bill of Materials

1 - Junked Computer Mouse (or new el cheapo one)
2 - Small DC motors (Solarbotics Part #RM1A)
1 - Double-Pole, Double-Throw (DP/DT) 5-volt Relay (SB Part #RE1)
1 - LM386 Audio Operational Amplifier (SB Part #LM386)
2 - Light Sensors (IR *Detectors* taken from mouse)
1 - SP/ST Toggle Switch (SB Part #SWT2)
1 - SP/ST Touch Switch (taken from mouse)
1 - 9-volt Battery Snap (SB Part#BHold9V)
1 - 9-volt Battery (the checkout line of your grocery store)
1 - 2N3904 or PN2222 NPN-Type Transistor (SB Part #TR2222)
1 - 1k-Ohm to 20k-Ohm Resistor (Range available from Solarbotics)
1 - 1k-Ohm Resistor (SB Part #R1.0K)
1 - 10uF to 100uF Electrolytic Capacitor (range available from Solarbotics)
2 - Spools of 22 to 24-guage stranded hook-up wire (one black, one red) (available at Radio Shack, or use salvaged wire)
4 - 6-1/2" pieces of 22-guage solid hook-up wire (two red, two black) (available at Radio Shack, or salvaged)
1 - Wide Rubber Band
1 - Small piece of scrap plastic (about 1/4" x 2-1/2")
1 - Small piece of Velcro or two-way tape (optional)

Q: How come you're supposed to use the Infrared emitters from the mouse as Mousey's light-sensitive eyes? Why not the IR detectors?
A: The reason why we use the emitters and not the detectors from the mouse encoder wheels is that the IR detectors are designed to only turn on and off at a specific light level. The emitters, although they were designed to SEND infrared signals, will also respond to a wide spectrum of incoming light levels (just as any Light Emitting Diode, while it's designed to emit light, is also sensitive to light). For the IR emitters, we do a number of things to make that light response more sensitive. First, we connect the Gain pins (1 and 8) on our LM386 Op-Amp chip, which boosts the signal strength, then we use "reverse biasing" (switching the positive and negative leads on the emitters) to pump up the signal even more, and then we add our sensitivity booster sub-circuit, which gives us another gain. All of this turns the lowly mouse IR emitters into reasonably light-sensitive robot eyes.

Q: I'm confused about the wiring on the light sensors. Why do you switch the wiring that you solder to the IR emitters?
A: This can be a little confusing (especially to those of us who are dyslexic). We thought the easiest way of handling the reverse biasing of the emitters was to first determine which pin is cathode (-) and which is anode (+), and then, solder the red (+) wire onto the CATHODE (-) side and the black (-) wire onto the ANODE (+) side. From here, you just treat the red and black wires as if they were positive and negative (even tho they're actually reversed). Does that make sense? So what is happening here? By reversing the direction of the current flow through the emitter, it makes them more light sensitive.

Q: Can I move my “eyestalks” around or do they need to be positioned as they are in the project photographs?
A: You *can* bend the stalks apart and forwards and backwards. Part of the idea behind the eyestalk design is that you can mechanically "tune" the sensors by adjusting the position of the eyestalk wires. The fronts of the emitters (which have a little clear dome on their faces -- think of them as pupils) should be facing the light source at all times.

Actually, you can also play around with any positioning, to see what sort of action you get by reflected light (from a shiny floor and a gaze that's turned downward, for instance). But try such experiments only after you've got Mousey working properly with eyes front n' center.

Q: So, LEDs can act as light sensors? That blows my mind.
A: All LEDs have photoconductive properties, if you reverse bias them (swap anode and cathode). Thing is, conductivity is not that high except under very bright conditions, so for practical use in a project like Mousey, IR LEDs work best, or obviously, a proper photodiode, photoresistor, or our mouse IR emitters (which are actually IR phototransistors).

Here's an excerpt from the Solarbotics.net website about the light sensitivity of FLEDs (Flashing LEDs):

“Ben's use of this circuit for a photopopper takes advantage of an interesting feature of FLEDs -- they are photo-sensitive. In particular, light shining on a FLED causes that FLED's SE to be inhibited (to perform more poorly). So if you're building a phototropic FLED -based BEAMbot, you may have problems in bright light (both SEs in your 'bot are being inhibited, so neither side of your 'bot wants to fire) -- you can address this by partially shielding your FLEDs with heat-shrink tubing, or some paint (be careful here, you're trying to give your 'bot sunglasses, not blinders). Meanwhile, if you're using a FLED-based SE on a non-phototrope, you'll want to completely cover the FLED (with heat-shrink tubing, or black electrical tape, or dark paint...).”

Q: I'm confused by the Mousey circuit diagram in your book, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots. It shows that the cathodes of the IR emitters connect to pins 2 and 3 on the LM386 chip (instead of anodes, the black wires). What's correct?
A: Crap! I can't believe I didn't notice that mistake in the book's artwork. Somehow it got switched on the art. I can't believe I didn't notice this during editing. Here's a link to the corrected diagram.

Here's what I'm putting in the Bug Report:

Mistake in Circuit Diagram!: The Mousey Circuit Diagram in the book and the one on this website has a mistake in the emitter eye hookups. Somehow the bevel on the IR emitter packages got switched and we didn't notice during editing. The leads on the emitters aren't labeled, but because the bevel indicates the cathode (-) side, it looks like you're supposed to hook the cathodes to pins 2 and 3 on the op-amp chip and the anodes (+) to power. Oh contraire! You want to hook the anode (+) sides to pins 2 and 3. It gets confusing because of the whole "reverse biasing" technique used here (running power through the emitters in reverse to make them more photoconductive). Just remember that you want the negative emitter leads to go to power and the positive leads to go to the pin 2 and 3 inputs (it's counterintuitive, but that's what you do). In the book, we recommended soldering a red wire onto the cathode leads on each emitter and a black wire to the anodes, and then just treating the wires normally (red wires plug into power, blacks into the chips input pins). Don't know if this helps or confuses matters. Thanks to builder "Mousey Fan" for catching this error. Sorry about the confusion. Barbie sez: "Building robots is hard!"

Q: I love that illustration (of the circuit diagram) and the illustrations in your book. Who did them?
A: Mark Frauenfelder, of Boing Boing fame. And yeah, he did such a nice job, on all the illos, but especially that one and the servo hacking diagram from Chapter 7 (and, of course, the trading cards, which we hope to one day put up on the site). We budgeted all the illos at an hour a piece, but the servo hack image took Mark like six hours. It's so hard doing a technical book like this and trying to make the images both attractive, easy to understand, and accurate. On many of 'em, I would do sketches, we'd scan them in, Blake (my son) would add stuff, clean up, label parts, etc., we'd send them to Mark, he'd draw, send back, we'd send them back with changes, etc. Maddening, and time-consuming. Given all that, I think they turned out really well. And then there was the photography and the Photoshop tweaking... Have I thanked Jay yet? Jay Townsend was the photographer. He did an amazing job too.

Q: Can you offer some advice on speed control for Mousey? I've built the circuit and can see the motors spinning very fast speed. I am afraid that when I put everything together my Mousey will be dashing around out of control.
A: The easiest thing to do is to just change the contact profile of the "wheels," in other words; use a steeper angle on the motor mounting such that LESS of the gear/wheel comes in contact with the ground. You can also use a tire material with a slicker surface (rather than rubber) for the wheels which will "waste" some of the excessive torque.

It IS true that Mousey is extremely lively. I like this about it. Both the walker project and this one have a very biological feel to them. The walker has a persistence that's very bug-like, and Mousey acts very jumpy and nervous like a bio-mouse. You want to try to achieve that balance where it's right on the verge of chaotic. If I built mine over again, I would make the angle a bit steeper to reduce some of the traction.

Also keep in mind that the motors just sitting there tethered to the breadboard are much livelier than they are once they're carrying the full weight of the mouse case, the 9V battery, the relay, the switches, and everything else. You can get an idea for how the motors will behave in the bot by using poster putty to temporarily affix them to the notches you cut in the mouse case bottom at different test angles (I talked about this in the book). Also temp. fix the battery and just toss all of the other parts in the case as well. Hook the motor wires between a switch and the battery, flip it on, and then try to grab the switch again to turn "this crazy thing off!," as Mousey takes off like a bat outta hell. I did this when I first got these motors, to make sure they were appropriate. I put everything in the mouse (except, of course, the mouse case top).

I've gotten a lot of email from builders who find the Mousey too speedy, making it feel more like a demo-derby racer than a photovoric robot. So, we've done some testing on various ways of possibily slowing our mechano-mouse down. We tried adding resistance to the circuit -- in series with the motors and on the chip's power pin. Neither of these worked. Adding resistance in this way seems to screw with the op-amp chip's ability to do its job (which is to dynamically equalize its output to the two motors). There may be some other way to re-design the circuit to add resistance (and therefore slow down motor RPMs), but I don't have the time nor the inclination to go this route. The next thought we had was to tweak the "tires," experimenting with different materials that would change how the rubber meets the road (so to speak). On the original Mousey, we used LEGO Mindstorms corragated plastic tubing. This stuff seemed fairly slick, but we wanted to try something even slicker. Before doing this, my bot-building assistant Jesse Hurdus tried making some "thick" rubber tires from rubber bands. Instead of just using one thickness of rubber band (as I suggested in the book), he wrapped the band around three or four times. It seems counter-intuitive (you'd think these tires would provide even greater traction and speed), but these bigger rubber tires seem to do the trick. They slow the vehicle down to an extent that the feedback loop between light/sensors/chip/motors is more effective. We also made the angle of the motors steeper, as was mentioned in an earlier post. The problem here is that, unlike Herbie versions of this bot design, which usually don't have cases, with Mousey, you're constrained by the lid of the mouse case when altering the motor angle. We made ours as steep as possible while still allowing the top to go on. We recommend you do the same. You can also go in the other direction and make the motors relatively flat on the case bottom. This works well if you use actual tires on the wheels, which a lot of builders do. We've seen builder make four-wheel Mousey's (see photo at the beginning of this FAQ) with one passive axle and one powered. We recommend using the poster putty option and experimenting.

Q: I don't have breadboarding gear. Can't I just go ahead and build the robot. There aren't that many parts. Could that much really go wrong?
A: Breadboarding is an essential part of electronics. A board and a jumper kit don't cost that much. By breadboarding, you're guaranteeing that all of the components are working and you're verifying that the circuit design is correct and that you've interpreted it correctly. If you then assemble/solder up the project and it doesn't work properly, you know that it's not the circuit design itself or any of the constituent components. This makes troubleshooting a whole lot easier. So, everybody reading this, PLEASE, for the love of all that's mechanical and brought to life by frisky electrons: breadboard, breadboard, breadboard! It's amazing how much email I'm getting from builders with problems that stem from skipping this crucial step.

Q: I have the Mousey circuit working, but the LM386 chip is getting really hot, so hot, touching it gave me a small blister. Is this normal?
A: In a word: No. You must have been a short circuit someplace. The chip (or none of the other components) should get what would be described as “hot,” warm maybe, but not THAT warm. Look carefully at all of your wire connections and solder joins and look for crossed wires or bridges of solder that might be shorting the circuit.

Q: You claim this is a beginner's robot project, and it's in a book for “Absolute Beginners.” The soldering seems kind of hard and you have to buy breadboarding stuff, a multimeter and a lot of other high-priced tools. How can this be considered “beginner”?
A: I'm getting a lot of email from people complaining that this and the other projects in my book are too hard for a beginner. It's ROBOTS, people! No real robot project is going to be easy. And these are scratch-built robots. When I ask these folks if they've built any of the kits first that I review and recommend in the book or done the soldering practice I recommend, they ALL say no. If you are a beginner and you jump in trying to learn soldering and robot building with one of these projects, it is do-able, and it'll be quite the learning experience, but it will also not be without some genuine frustrations. I guess it'll separate the true bot builders from the wannabes 'cause you'll need patience and persistance, two qualities that a robot engineer needs in large quantities. But that said, I do recommend that people get their skill set down and some easier kits under their belts before tackling the projects. And as to the “expensive tools,” you'll need all of this stuff if you plan to build any other bots or other electronics projects, and most of it is NOT expensive. The most expensive tool is the Digital Multimedia and you can even get a really respectable one of those inexpensively if you look for sales or buy one on eBay.

BTW, builders: When you buy parts, always get extras of components that are cheap. These IC chips, caps, resistors, relays are all inexpensive so get more than you need in case you blow any or they don't work to spec.

Q: I did not want to wait for the motors from Solorbotics, so I went to Radio Shack and got some motors, the smallest ones they had. I want to slow Mousey down by attaching a large gear to do some gearing down affect, but I can not find a gear to match the teeth. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
A: The motors you got are probably the Mabuchi 1.5-3V models. Did they cost like US$2.99? Those are surprisingly great motors for the price. If I'm not mistaken, they're used in the gearmotors for the WowWee Robosapien. Designer Mark Tilden has used these motors before, in the B.I.O.-Bugs and the Beastland Dragons (his two previous bot projects with WowWee).

For this particular project, however, they have some problems, tho. They EAT batteries. Much less power-efficient than the Solarbotics RM1 (which is also a Mabuchi, BTW). They're also a lot heavier. Using two of these motors would nearly equal the weight of three of the RM1s. This might not be such a bad thing in terms of slowing your bot down. I think they're also slower than the RM1s, which again, may not be such a bad thing in this instance. This may all add up to mean that, using these motors, you don't have to gear down 'cause these other factors increase the mechanical resistance of the overall bot. The biggest problem is that...well...they're big. More case-cutting, more fitting, more trouble getting the lid on the case. Then you've got gears and gear attachments/housings to consider. We specifically chose this motor because it fit the weight, power, and size constraints of this application. Improvise with this in mind.

Q: The LM386 chip has only 1 output on pin 5 controlling the speed of 2 motors independently that are on the same line. How is this possible? Am I missing something?
A: This LM386 chip is designed as an audio amplifier. It's supposed to compare two input values and amplify the difference. It doesn't matter what that difference is, just so long as there is one. It sends the amplified signal to the output pin. As the chip "struggles" to equalize the difference in the inputs, it changes the power on the output pin. It is this power fluctuation that is used to "steer" the motors based on the changing values of the two light-driven inputs.

The LM386/Mousey circuit uses a split-power output, meaning that if we have two power draws on the line, which we do, it will attempt to split the power needs evenly. But if we have uneven input, as when one "eye" is receiving more light than the other, the output reflects that in more power going to one motor than the other. These power fluctuations and then equalizations (when the two eyes are getting equal amounts of light input) allow Mousey to steer towards a light source.

This is an amazing little chip for what it can do. I was describing the circuit to a geek friend last night and he was in awe of the fact that you can make a "real" robot (read: one that has a true sensor-brain-actuator chain) out of something as lowly as an el cheapo chip designed to make speakerphones speak and analog modems go squeek-SKWACK-shsssssh, etc. I'm in awe of folks like Randy Sargent of MIT (who created the original Herbie circuit), Mark Tilden, and others who can create these minimalist robot brains out of lowly analog components.

BTW: Solarbotics.net has a nice library of datasheets for components used in BEAM (and BEAM-related) robots. Included here is the LM386 sheet:

Q: Are there any alternatives for the LM386 chip?
A: I know of no Herbie-circuit hacks using other op-amps. I've seen a similar photovore built from the venerable 555 chip, but I haven't built one.

Grant McKee's adorable Herbie built on a 555 timer chip

Q: I have read your explanation of how the LM386 chip works and I still don't get it. Can you elaborate?
A: Okay. I'll try. When the light value is the same (across both inputs), both motors receive equal power and steer the robot directly towards the light source. If one sensor is getting more light, it will split the difference to the power output. So, with a 9v battery, when light is hitting the eyes equally, both motors will each feed off of 4.5v and spin at the same rate. If the input becomes unbalanced, the voltage on the pin might rise to 6v, so one motor will have 6 volts to draw on, but the other will only have 3 available, turning that motor about half as slow. But the chip wants the values to be equal, so it will react by changing the power levels as the robot moves (as it amplifies and outputs the difference between the two inputs), always trying to lock onto an input of equal value on both input pins (steering the bot towards the light in the process).

Q: What do I need to know about resistor wattage ratings? I see that some are rated 1/4-watt, some are 1/2-watt, even 1/8-watt.
A: 1/4-watt is most common for these types of low-volt/low amp circuits. 1/8-watt resistors can also be used. This rating refers to the number of watts a resistor can safely dissipate, as heat, before it fails, fries, blows up, etc. 1/4-watt resistors are more than adequate for this circuit and readily available at retailers like Radio Shack.

Q: Why is a 5V relay used if the battery is 9V?
A: The coil on the 5V relay is activated at 5V, but it's rated for much higher voltages (I think up to 24 or 30VDC on the contacts, don't know the upper limit on the coil itself). The 5v relay is used because it's a ubiquitous component found in many low-power electromechanical switching applications (such as our humble little circuit).

Q: I have a button switch not from a mouse that I want to use for the bump switch. How can I tell which of the three terminals on the switch I should use?
A: Ah. Good question, and a good opportunity to address some I didn't in the book: selecting switches. Switches of this type (a button switch with three pins) are frequently marked on their case (or “package”). The print may be tiny. If it is marked, it will likely say “NO,” “C” and “NC.” These stand for “Normally Open,” “Common,” and “Normally Close.” If they are marked, you want to connect your circuit to the “C” and to “NC.” Normally Open simply means that the switch is open (i.e, off” when the switch is NOT depressed. A Normally Closed switch would power the circuit until the switch was triggered. Not good in our case.

If your switch package is not labeled, no biggie. Just set your multimeter to volts and attach your probes to two of the terminals (the center one will assuredly be Common). When you get juice flowing through the terminals with the switch in one of the On positions (facing away from Common), that's your NO terminal and the one you want to use.

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Thanks, Jef!

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Don't you hate it when the next generation shows up its elders? While trawling Flickr for pics of Mousey the Junkbot builds, I bumped into this mousebot, one built from an optical mouse. It repurposes the optics for dead-reckoning navigation. It also has an IR sensor, bump sensors, a serial radio link, charge-monitor, and self-charger contacts that mate with a base station. Total cost: about US$30 in parts. Maybe I'll try and track the builder down and get him to tell us more.

BTW: The original Mousey is making the rounds. He just got back yesterday from a trip to an art museum in Chicago, where he was representing MAKE in a show about the history of DIY. Ah... to be young and globetrotting...

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We covered Chris Myers's work here before, his wonderful Plexi-clad Palm robot. Now he's got some Roombas he's been hacking up to similarly impressive effect. He made one, a US$30 Craigslist special, into a sort of development platform, using an Arduino microcontroller and the Bluesmurf Bluetooth module. Thus outfitted, Roomba became a wine sommelier. Ah, Roomba, so sophisticated... But soon, Roomba answered the call to serve and traded in his towel and corkscrew for a gun and a bandelerro. Chris outtfitted his Red Roomba with an Airsoft gun and a homebuilt ammo hopper. Hell hath no fury like a Roomba scorned! (Be sure to check out the video of the militant vacuum in action).

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I think Jake von Slatt and I-Wei have a contest going to see who can post the most and coolest steampunky tech projects. We just blogged about I-Wei's amazing Steam Beetle a few weeks back, and now, he has a new creation, each one always seeming to outdo the last. The R2S2 (R2 Steam 2) is a steam-powered droid built using the Cheddar steam boiler I-Wei uses in most of his creations, and Wilesco D48 marine engines. The R2 body is a Hasbro R2D2 Interactive Droid he snagged for cheap on eBay. I love the boiler pressure needle guage on the face plate. Check out the video. It's hysterical. He has a little "ad" for his other Crabu creations at the end.

I just found out that I-Wei is going to be at the Maker Faire next month showing off his steam vehicles. I'll finally get a cnance to meet him. I'm going to be there running Mousey the Junkbot workshops. Any other Street Techies going?

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Chris Anderson, the big hat at Wired, has been pursuing some fun geekery on his blog, The Long Tail. He wants to start a 3D Robotics League, and in that vein has launched a project to build an under US$1,000 UAV. As part of that, last night, he bodged up a prototype of a LEGO NXT Autopilot using the new Hitechnic Gyro Sensor and a compass sensor. He plans to upgrade the compass to Bluetooth GPS. He may also have to add a ultrasonic sensor to handle landings. Still, pretty freakin' cool.

In other LEGO Mindstorms NXT news, another builder used the Hitechnic gyro sensor to make an NXT faux Segway. Check out this video.

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Here's a video that shows a Robopet being controlled via voice using Robosapien Dance Machine, the free open source program for scripting Wow Wee's robots and controlling them by voice.

This short demonstration video shows the Robopet being put through its paces and shows how talking to the bot is much more fun and lifelike than using the remote control. Most importantly, the vid shows what happens when a Robopet encounters the average computer geeks' socks.

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The group's forum has some discussion and tips and includes a PDF with a clear, corrected schematic which also includes instructions for adding a second bump switch in the back. You could use this to make a tail (out of a piece of guitar string and a paper clip) like the Solarbotics Herbie the Mousebot has.

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* His history as a robotics physicist including his time at NASA.
* Funny and interesting stories relating to the original Robosapien, which has now sold over 6 million units.
* His upcoming robots ,such as such as the Roboquad and Roboboa, which will increase the total number of robots sold by Wow Wee beyond the current 20 million mark
* His opinions on the Japanese style of building robots, compared to his style which is based on nature, a style which he calls "analog".
* Why the robotics industry has not taken off yet and what needs to happen for it to do so.

Thanks, Robert!

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We'll be doing our own review when our eval unit arrives, by the end of the month. Stay tuned...

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As you can see from the vid, it's actually the same Robosapien retro-fitted with the flame-thrower. So now he's got a flamethrower AND a coil-gun. Finally a step towards taking Robosapien's security mode a little more seriously. [And kids, don't try this at home (at least not without adult supervision).]

Here's a link to the video.
Here's a link to the builder's page.

Thanks, Robert!

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"WowWee's wing-flapping flying insect robot is now available on Radio Shack's web site for ordering. The US$49 Flytech Dragonfly is currently exclusive to the Shack, although reports indicate that in a month, shipping may be open to other retailers. Here's the product page on Radio Shack."

For more information on the Flytech Dragonfly and some videos, check out RobotsRule's page.

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Robert Oschler, of RobotsRule, tells Street Tech:

The Pleo pre-order date has been moved from February 3rd to sometime this spring. To make up for it, maker Ugobe is holding a contest to give away ten Pleos via an essay contest from those people signed up on Ugobe's mailing list. You must be signed up by the contest start date of Febuary 3rd. The contest asks entrants to write a 250-word essay on "How do you envision robotic life forms influencing or touching your life in the next five years?". Only the first 500 submissions will be accepted. Out of those, ten will be chosen based on the best answer to receive a free Pleo that will come with a personal note from Caleb Chung.

Pleo is being delayed due to upgrades like the following:
- It's eyes are being redone to look as realistic and life like as possible.
- The skin is being refined to have features that are painted on to be replaced with sculpted details that will give the impression of muscle tissue under the skin.
- The number of sounds Pleo can make is being expanded on the speaker upgraded to make Pleo's voice much more realistic.
- Finally, a chin sensor is being added so scratching Pleo under the chin gets an fun playful reaction.

People can learn more about Pleo at the RobotsRule Pleo Dinosaur page.

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Robert Oschler of RobotsRule tells Street Tech:

"There's a new Pleo video on YouTube from a special meeting held by maker Ugobe at CES 2007, courtesy of Lance Ulanoff from PC Magazine. The video shows a smoother-moving, more realistic-looking prototype of Ugobe's artificial pet dinosaur, sporting a new skin. There is also a new slide show of Pleo screenshots. You can find a round-up of Pleo videos, pictures, and reviews on RobotsRule."

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Street Tech pal, cheerleader, and muse Alberto Gaitán got a nice shout-out in the Washington Post yesterday as part of a piece on the various exhibitions and events going on in DC this spring to celebrate the Washington Color School of color field painting. The Phillips, the Hirshhorn, the Corcoran, and other galleries and orgs are planning events. 18th St is going to be repainted in stripes to honor Gene Davis (as it was in 1987 after his death in '85).

Alberto's piece, called "Remembrancer," will be at the Curator's Office on 14th St. and involve three robots that will translate sensor input collected from around the gallery into a color field work robo-painted over the course of a month.

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In the current issue of MAKE (Vol. 8), I have a piece on Pummers, a type of solar-powered robotic plant life. I've known about Pummers for years, but my inspiration for doing the MAKE piece was finding Zach Debord's gorgeous Pummer set on Flickr. Being an artist and designer, Zach understands the value of making miniature robots that are as beautiful as they are functional. Mark Tilden, the "Big God" of BEAM robotics, has a wonderful adage that a human is a way that a robot makes another robot. One "evolutionary strategy" here is centered on aesthetics. Aesthetics drive interest. The Pummer piece is a prime example. I saw Zach's bots, I was wowed by their beautiful designs, and wanted others to see them. The piece got published, and now, if you search on Pummer in the MAKE Flickr pool, you see other people are making them. The robots are replicating themselves.

In the realm of behavior-based robotics, BEAM, bio-mimics, and other bottom-up, bug-brained approaches to robotic design, nearly every conceivable form of motility has been tried. There are bots on wheels, two-, four-, six-, eight-legged bots, bots with whegs (wheel/leg crossbreeds), snakebots, spinnerbots, swimmers, fliers, climbers. You name it. One of the less documented types of robotic motility is found in the Vibrobot, a type of robot that gets around by shimmying, shaking, and scooting. It's not the most graceful or accurate way to explore the world, but it's very easy to build a Vibrobot and they're really fun (and funny) to watch.

The key to Vibrobot movement is a motor (or motors) that employs an unbalanced weight. Pager and other motors used to create vibration alerts in consumer electronics use this technique. As the motor shaft spins, the weight on the shaft, being off-kilter, makes the motor, and therefore the entire pager, vibrate. Hook such a motor up to a little robo-critter with four fixed legs, and when the motor fires and the weight starts spinning, the bot will skitter across the floor. That's all there is to it. Since the legs don't need to be articulated or driven, there are few mechanical challenges in building a Vibrobot. The power circuit is very simple too. The simplicity of the mechanics and electronics frees you up to put more effort into making the bots look incredibly cool. It's no wonder then that, as with Pummers, Zach has built an amazing menagerie of Vibrobots. We asked him to tells us how he goes about building these wacky little robo-critters.

Here's a call-out image that details the parts used in a basic Vibrobot (the Solar Engine circuit is detailed in the diagram below).

As you can see, it's all fairly simple. This Vibrobot uses the FLED (as in "Flashing LED") version of a Type 1 Voltage-Triggered Solar Engine. This type of common BEAM power circuit was discussed in my "Beginner's Guide to BEAM" and the "Two BEAMBots" projects in MAKE Vol. 6. This is the same FLED Type 1 SE used in Zach's Twin-Engine Solarroller we wrote about on Street Tech a few months back. In that piece, tI quote from a reasonably clear explanation of how a FLED-driven voltage trigger works from well-known BEAM builder Wilf Rigter.

Here is a schematic for the basic FLED SE circuit, taken from Beam-Online.

Parts List

Quant	Part	Solarbotics Parts #	Notes
1	Pager Motor	#RPM2	With weight still attached
1	3v Solar Cell	#SC2433	Any 3v cells, such as the 24mm x 33mm ones SB sells
1	4700uF cap	#CP4700uF	N/A
1	2N3904 NPN transistors	#TR3904	N/A
1	2N3906 PNP transistors	#TR3906	N/A
1	Flashing LEDs	#FLED	N/A
1	2.2K-ohm resistors	#R2.2k	N/A
N/A	Heat Shrink Tubing	N/A	Radio Shack has an assortment in various sizes. You'll want tubing all the way up to 2" dia.
1	Medium-Size Paper Clip	N/A	N/A
N/A	Guitar String	N/A	N/A
N/A	Red and Black Hook-Up Wire	N/A	Used to attach solar cell to SE circuit

This bot has two pager motors. The first one (on top) has a fan attached to it. This doesn't have much purpose besides offering some kinetic visual interest.

Zach's Building Tips

• The key to a good Vibrobot is to keep it as lightweight as possible so the motor can really jiggle it around when it fires.
• Play around with leg placement. Having only a couple of the legs touching the ground at the same time can create some interesting movement patterns.
• Buy a pack of jumbo- and regular-sized paperclips. For the US$2 you spend, you'll be able to build a whole fleet of robots. I almost exclusively use paperclips and guitar strings for my creations.
• An assortment pack of heat shrink tubing goes a long way. Not only are your bots more interesting-looking, but you can use the tubing in key places to reinforce weak joints. I rarely have two strips of heat shrink on top of each other just for visual appeal.

This dual-motor vibrobot has the ends of paperclips soldered to two pager motors. Each motor is connected to a CdS cell so the more light each "eye" gets, the more the motor on that side fires. It's great to watch it react to a flashlight.

Resource List

Solarbotics These guys are the go-to source for everything BEAM. I've been buying from them (and working with them) for many years and have always been impressed with their intense devotion to the BEAM hobby (and their customers).

Hobby Engineering Good source for motors, robot kits, parts, and other geekly goodies.

Goldmine Electronics I've never met a hardware geek who didn't heart the Goldmine. If you're not on their free catalog mailing list, get on it! It's a treasure-trove of weird and wonderful parts and deep discounted gadgets.

Mouser Zach sez (and I concur): "Great for any extra parts you might need. You may be able to find parts a little cheaper elsewhere but I've found that their fast shipping and great packaging (every item comes in a clearly marked bag) makes it worth any savings you might find elsewhere."

eBay Several good places in Hong Kong offer cheap LEDs via eBay.

Solarbotics.net The BEAM community portal. The Library section drops all sorts of mad science on BEAM theory and practice.

Beam-Online Another venerable and useful site for all things related to BEAM.

Zach's BEAM Bots on Flickr To see additional (and hi-res) versions of these images, and Zach's other bots, check out his Flickr page. To learn more about his design and fine arts work, visit his website.

This basic vibrobot uses a polyacene battery instead of a cap (to deliver about .6F of power). The bot gets a decent power burst when it fires. It also has a guitar string "nose" to help keep it away from larger bots.

Other Robot Projects from Street Tech

• Zach Debord's Twin-Engine Solarroller
• Gareth's Coat Hanger Walker
• Gareth's Mousey the Junkbot Page
• Mousey the Junkbot MAKE Project PDF
• Gareth's MAKE Vol. 8 Pummer piece PDF (with Zach's Pummers)
• Solarbotics Herbie the Mousebot Review
• Solarbotics Turbot Kit Review

  And you might also want to check out the companion site to my book, The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots.

  [Robot illustration by Mark Frauenfelder]

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The RoboBOA is, in fact, a lot of robot. Using a new adaptive vision system it can track and see objects up to 4 meters away with precision, and it doesn't just avoid them, it can take an interest. Motion is quick using its tail travel wheel, and it can raise itself almost a meter into the air during turns and demos. The default personality is very ET friendly, and it's stuffed with other personalities like patrol guard, rotating lazer sentry, even a strafing guard mode. There are 41 functions including volume control, tracking flashlight, explore, and it's even an iPod speaker amplifier.

Thanks, Robert!

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The iRobot Create comes fully assembled. It has 32 built-in sensors, two powered wheels, a castor (and optional 4th castor wheel), 10 pre-programmed behaviors, an expandable input/ouput port for custom sensors and actuators, a cargo bay with mounting points and a tailgate for ballast. This new bot platform works with optional accessories such as the iRobot Command Module, iRobot Roomba Virtual Wall units, the self-charging home base, and iRobot Roomba standard remote. You can use the Roomba rechargeable battery options or standard alkaline batteries. You’ll need a computer with a serial port (USB connectivity is expected soon) and Microsoft Windows XP, Linux or Mac OS X.

The First Look piece on Robot Magazine's site includes some pics of the Create turned into a laundry picker-upper, a store barker, and laser tag robots. Cool!

The Create starts at US$130 for a barebones unit and goes up to $230 for a full kit with Command Module, self-charging station, and two virtual walls. Here's the iRobot Create page.

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WowWee is showing their new spider robot at this month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This may be the bot that was rumored to be codenamed Spidersapien. Its actual name is the Roboquad, a fast moving four legged robot with advanced object assessment and detection circuitry. Built to move rapidly in any direction and react quickly to motion in its environment, it's slated to hit store shelves in Fall of 2007. Nocturnal, the clever Evosapien Team expert that created the sinister Robosapien + Teddy Bear creation named RoboTed, has created a fun video showing his idea of what the Roboquad/Spidersapien should have been.

You can discuss this new robot, or Nocturnal's vid, at the Roboquad forum.

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[Via Solarbotics]

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BTW: The Robots Rule Flytech page has a second video of the Dragonfly. This one looks like it was shot in WowWee's offices.

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I talked about the Miller Solar Engine variant (a more power-efficient, more configurable version of the traditional Type 1 voltage-triggered Solarengine) in my BEAM articles in MAKE. You could use one of these cells and its MSE circuit with a Gold Cap (.33F capacitor) on my Solarroller project from Make Vol. 6 and you'd get a nice long-burst power feed to the motor for a decent run of the Roller.

These Solar Engine Cells are a "Limited Edition" (oh, fancy...), so you should scoop 'em up while you can. And they're only US$9 for one or $7.25 for two or more.

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With the defense department spending the big bucks in R&D into this kind of hovering spybot, it's amazing that a toy company has something this "advanced" (he says in quotes because, while it is amazing for a first effort, it's still not what you'd call hummingbird-graceful -- stealth tech she ain't). Can't wait to see the other WowWee offerings.

[Via Engadget]

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"Probably the most enthusiastic recipient of the Robosapien V2 would be the robot builder/hardware hacker, either teen or adult, who’d be anxious for the visiting holiday relatives to leave so that he or she could whip out the Dremel tool and soldering iron and get busy “improving” Robosapien. WowWee’s robot designer, well-known robotics engineer Mark Tilden, encourages aftermarket modding, and designs his toys with well-labeled circuit boards, plug-in connectors, and plenty of space inside for user-added tech..."

Read the rest of the piece here.

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This kit looks really cool, adding a mouse-like PCB body that will tickle kids and terrify the housepets. The traditional Herbie circuit has also been modded to include two tactile whiskers in the front and a touch-sensitive tail so that it can work its way out of tight spots.

A portion of sales of Herbie will be donated to the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics, an org that Randy Sargent is involved with, which uses robotics to get kids excited about science, technology, engineering and math.

This kit would make the perfect gift for a kid, or anyone, who's interested in electronics and robotics, but maybe not confident enough to build a similar project from separate components. Solarbotics is taking pre-orders now and will ship kits out on November 24th.

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This slow-mo destruction of circuitry through liquid reminds me of one of the more amazing stories from WWII. Legend has it that Polish slave labor, put to work by the Nazis at Peenemünde to build V-2 rockets, would pee on the control electronics they were working on when their guards weren't looking. By the time the rockets had been assembled and sent to the launch pads, the urine had corroded the innards and many of the rockets malfunctioned. I don't know if this is an apocryphal story or not, but this kind of ingenuity (and bravery and selflessness) is always inspiring.

[Via we-make-money-not-art]

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This is a version of the project that was in my book, Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots, and pictured in Make Vol. 6 and on the issue's Web page. The illustrations were done by Boing Boing's Mark Frauenfelder and the photos are by Street Tech's court photographer Jay Townsend.

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The Fall issue of the most excellent Robot Magazine is on newstands now. Among other juicy fare, it has a cover story on the Microsoft Robotics Studio and a closer look at the NXT Mindstorms system. On the mag's website, they also have a preview of an upcoming feature piece for the Winter issue on the amazing MANOI Humanoid Robots (which look like they were beamed straight out of a Japanese anime). The Web piece has lots of photos of the two main MANOI models (pictured above), bot innards, and a hi-res exploded schematic. Also: Tom Atwood, Editor-in-Chief of Robot, was recently on the Daedalus Howell Radio Show. You can access an MP3 of it here.

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From the Make blog:
Roomba adds a new workshop bot to their line up, last week they announced a pet version too... - "The same size and shape as the iRobot Roomba® Vacuuming Robot, iRobot Dirt Dog features an oversized, bagless debris bin that is approximately 40 percent larger than Roomba's bin. The robot also features two counter-rotating bristle brushes that spin at nearly 1,000 rotations per minute to pick up heavy debris such as nails, wood chips and small shop scraps. With brushes specially designed to sweep up dirt that clings to rough surfaces, the robot is recommended for use on hard floors, shop carpets and industrial surfaces only." The price is expected to be extremely reasonable US$130.

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Gopod bless Flickr! While searching on it recently to see if anyone else had built Mousey the Junkbot or a Symet or Solarroller inspired by my recent BEAM robotics articles in MAKE, I discovered Zach DeBord and his amazing BEAM creations. A Chicago-based designer and Web developer who's done work for (among others) Comcast, Volvo and Yellow Tail (mmm...wine), Zach's bots put the "A" (as in "Aesthetics") back into BEAM, with gorgeous, meticulous designs that are as much objets d'art as autonomous robo-critters.

All of his robots are awesome-looking, but I was instantly attracted to this roller because it's bigger than any solarroller I've ever seen and it uses two solar cells, four storage capacitors, and two gearmotors. Ingeniously, this roller can be steered (sorta). Zach writes: "It is currently configured to go forwards, but by angling either solar panel, it will turn more in one direction since one panel will be getting more light. With both panels angled in the same direction, it is pretty phototropic."

The two large drive wheels on the roller where made from the discs in old SyQuest 270MB 3.5" removable cartridges. Of these, Zach sez: "The SyQuest platters make great wheels except that they are fairly slick. I plan on getting some rubberizing paint and putting beads along the edges to give the wheels more traction." The third wheel, an idler, "keeps the motors from dragging on the ground. It is actually a small plastic part also taken out of the SyQuest disc."

For this design, Zach used two FLED-based voltage-triggered Solar Engines (Type 1). In my "Beginner's Guide to BEAM" and the "Two BEAMBots" projects in MAKE Vol. 6, we also discussed and used voltage-triggered Type 1 SEs, but they used a 1381 voltage detector IC to control the circuit. FLED-based SEs use a Flashing LED (hence "FLED") in place of the 1381. On the FLED SE page on the Circuits Library on Solarbotics.net, this is how BEAM guru Wilf Rigter describes the way in which such a circuit works:

"The solar cell charges the main capacitor until the voltage is high enough for the FLED to start flashing. When the FLED flashes, current flows through the FLED and the base of the PNP transistor and it turns on. Now current passes through the PNP into the base of the NPN transistor and it turns on. When the NPN turns on the collector which is connected to the motor and the 2.2K resistor goes low (to GND). This places a voltage across the 2.2K resistor which provides more base current for the PNP transistor which makes it turn on even more. That is called positive feedback or latching of the circuit because both the PNP and NPN transistors remain on until the main capacitor is discharged to less than 0.7V. When the capacitor voltage drops below 0.7V the PNP and NPN transistors both turn off because of the minimum voltage required to keep the base emitter turned on."

Here is a schematic for the basic FLED SE circuit, taken from Beam-Online.

Zach on building BEAM Roller circuits: "I usually build engines in a batch for later use. In the image below, you can see that there are sockets on top of the engine circuits (made from IC socket pins). These are used to easily plug in the solar cells. The two leads (red and black) coming out of the back of the engines go to the motors. In this picture you can see the two types of engines that I make: one "classic" configuration with storage capacitors (the two engines on the left) and another config using Polyacene disk batteries in place of the caps (which deliver roughly .6 Farads of stored power). These are represented by the three engines on the right."

Parts List

Quantity	Part	Solarbotics Parts #	Notes
2	SyQuest Disc Platters	N/A	Dumpster diving, anyone?
2	3v Solar Cells	#SC2433	Any 3v cells, such as the 24mm x 33mm ones SB sells.
2	Gear Motor GM3	#GM3	These are 224:1 90-degree shaft motors
2	2200uF caps	N/A	N/A
2	4700uF caps	#CP4700uF	N/A
2	2N3904 NPN transistors	#TR3904	N/A
2	2N3906 PNP transistors	#TR3906	N/A
2	Flashing LEDs	#FLED	N/A
2	2.2K-ohm resistors	#R2.2k	N/A
2	IC Socket pins	#SPin24	These are on a 24-pin DIP that you pull off to use.
1	1/2" piece of 1/4" tube	N/A	Used as a spacer between engines.
1	1.5" screw	N/A	To fasten engines together (via hole on motor casings. You just need to find a screw that'll fit snuggly.
1	Round plastic piece	N/A	To be used as back stabilizing wheel. Zach got his from the same SyQuest disc.
N/A	Heat Shrink Tubing	N/A	Radio Shack has an assortment in various sizes. You'll want it all the way up to 2" dia.
1	Heavy Duty "Jumbo" Paper Clip	N/A	N/A
Spool(s)	Hook-up Wire	N/A	Use red and black to keep things colorful and polarity-coded.

Zach's twin-engine roller next to a more
common single-engine variety.

Resource List

Solarbotics
These guys are the go-to source for everything BEAM. I've been buying from them (and working with them) for many years and have always been impressed with their intense devotion to the BEAM hobby (and their customers).

Hobby Engineering
Good source for motors, robot kits, parts, and other geekly goodies.

Goldmine Electronics
I've never met a hardware geek who didn't heart the Goldmine. If you're not on their free catalog mailing list, get on it! It's a treasure-trove of weird and wonderful parts and deep discounted gadgets.

Mouser
Zach sez (and I concur): "Great for any extra parts you might need. You may be able to find parts a little cheaper elsewhere but I've found that their fast shipping and great packaging (every item comes in a clearly marked bag) makes it worth any savings you might find elsewhere."

eBay
Several good places in Hong Kong offer cheap LEDs via eBay.

Solarbotics.net
The BEAM community portal. The Library section drops all sorts of mad science on BEAM theory and practice.

Beam-Online
Another venerable and useful site for all things related to BEAM.

Zach's BEAM Bots on Flickr
To see additional (and hi-res) versions of these images, and Zach's other bots, check out his Flickr page. To learn more about his design and fine arts work, visit his website.

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According to a story on the gadget mag T3's site, the next gen Robosapien, the color LCD- and SD-card-equipped Robosapien RS Media, has been designed to easily interface with the Lego Mindstorms NXT microcontroller. The NXT computer brick will allegedly fit perfectly into the backpack designed into the RS Media. While the T3 article also has some tidbits about the Robosapien AFTER the Media model (which will, according to the piece, have Segway-like legs and be Net connected), let's hope that the addition of the NXT MCU on the RS Media means that we won't have to wait for the 4th gen to get ol' Robosap online.

And is it just me, or does the RS Media look a little bit like Robocop with his head on backwards? "You have the right to remain silent." Blam!

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I used a picture in the Beginner's Guide to BEAM article of Harold Ilano's incredibly cool Black Vermin, his take on Mark Tilden's infamous VBUG 1.5, built from a Sony Walkman and an oven timer (among other parts). Harold has a bunch of other cool bots on his site, including the recently built Hermit, a wee-little four-legged walker that uses five micro-servos. Check out the vids of it in action.

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The always thoughtful wireheads over at Solarbotics have put together a couple of parts bundles for my two BEAMbot projects in the latest issue of Make. Each bundle comes with a solar cell, a cassette motor, and all required electronics. All you need to add are the structural pieces (paper clips and other buildy bits) and the wheels (for the Roller).

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Read an AP piece on Pebbles.
See the Pebbles page at Ryerson University in Canada.
Check out the Pebbels info at Telebotics, the bots' maker.

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And you thought today's urban carparks required a tight turning radius. Luckily, in this one, it's robo-valet parking only. Actually, what you're looking at is a robot retrieval system for new cars at the VW plant in Wolfsburg, Germany. Think of it as a VW vending machine. Let's just hope they don't let the cars plummet to the bottom of the machine when you select one. You know what that does to your Fritos, imagine what it'd do to your new 2006 Jetta.

[Via Nxtbot]

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And, be sure to check out the website of VJ DeLeon, one of the bot-building engineers. He's got some very juicey stuff here, including most of the info and diagrams you'd need to build the types of BEAMbots seen here. If you successfully build the two solarengine-based bot projects I have in Make No. 6, a bot like this, especially VJ's FredFly (right), might be a suitable next project.

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So many areas of business, entertainment, and sports have a Hall of Fame. Did you know there's even a Robot Hall of Fame? There has been since 2003. It's the brainchild of those prodigious crania over at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science. The 2006 Inductees have just been announced. They are (...the envelope please): Maria , the art deco fembot from Fritz Lang's landmark 1927 film "Metropolis," Gort, the big-boned bot from 1951's "The Day the Earth Stood Still," David, the droid that sees dead people, from Spielberg's/Kubrick's "Artificial Intelligence: AI," the Sony AIBO robo-pet, and SCARA (Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm), the increasingly ubiquitous industrial robot. Previous Hall of Famers include Mars Pathfinder, ASIMO, R2-D2, and C-3PO.

The RHF has the two categories "Robots from Science Fiction" and "Robots from Science" to celebrate the robots that inspire us and those we create as a result of that inspiration. The new bots will officially be welcomed into the Hall during a ceremony this June. No word yet on what Maria Metropolis will be wearing, but we think she'd look stunning in anything from the DigiKey catalog.

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WowWee Toys and Evolution Robotics inked an alliance deal last week. WowWee are makers of Robosapien and a growing number of affordable, surprisingly low-tech, and equally surprisingly, high-function (for the price and tech levels) robots. Evolution is best known for their ER1 robot platforms (which use your laptop as their brains) and their vision, pattern-recognition, and robot navigation systems.

Other robot geeks seem excited by the deal. I'm not as sure. I know that each generation of Robosapien and other WowWee bots are getting more sophisticated, and that's as it should be. They're building on top of previously proven technologies to create "smarter," more versatile robots. Solid bottom-up robot development. So I get a little nervous thinking about marrying the lo-tek, largely analog ingenuity of Robosapien with the relatively complex, microcomputer world of the vision and navigation systems that Evolution trades in. I hope that this represents a real meeting of the minds between Mark Tilden (designer of the Robosapien) and his appropriate technology/BEAM approach and the software-minded developers at Evolution and not one where WowWee thinks they need to go all fussy-tech, with lots of digital bells and whistles, to make the next generation of successful robot buddies. Or do they?

I guess what I'm really wondering (out loud) is what Mark Tilden thinks about this deal and where HE thinks the future of Robosapien and its ilk lie? For sure, it'll be interesting to see what happens next.

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Called the ITR ("Internet Renaissance"), the foot tall robot uses something called RTML ("Robot Transaction Markup Language") to present Internet contact in a form that the robot can interpret in sound, motion, facial expressions and speech. The company is hoping that RTML will become a standard for Web-to-Bot translation and that robots like the ITR will become a common way for families to get their news, information, weather reports, and entertainment news.

Let's try a little thought experiment to see how this would work. Here are some of today's top stories. Imagine a 12" bot on your dining room table dancing, lighting up, and making grunts and groans while delivering these items in one of those slightly unnerving synthetic voices:

*Delay Resigns from House
*Protestors and Police Clash in Paris
*Saddam Accused of Genocide
*Tom Cruise Gets Candid About His Dyslexia

Actually, now that I think about it, I can't get one of these robo-clowns acting out my daily news fast enough. Jon Stewart may soon be out of a job.

[Via Pink Tentacle]

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[Via Robots.Net]

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