Tech Talk

I was helping a friend of mine construct a simple robot to plot some characters written in a text file or just follow a random scribble updated-live between the robot and the paint tool used. We were only at very higher levels of abstraction because how-on-earth-will-you-get-the-actions-done-in-paint is certainly an unanswered question.

But doing this excercise just gave me another point that I never seemed to use all this time. It is nothing we have not known so far. Components of a vector along the axes of interest. One of the things I am interested in doing includes assembling a robot that would move about like one of us in a workshop floor. Only I want to do this without all that complex research done all over the world. Ridiculous, isn’t it? (By the way, I meant my thought is ridiculous and not the research work done!)

One of the problems I faced in my project work was passing on the control information to the robot over a wireless link. I had not thought about/read research papers on how to do this in an efficient manner. I was trying to send the entire bit sequences to keep the motor rolling! But there seems to be better ways.

Suppose I generate a constrainted box in my application and map it to the space that my robot will move about in. Then all I need to send over the link is just some binary representation of the component angle. Since I mapped the space onto my application, I can hardwire all the other constants such that any binary sequence read in will cause the motors to move such that the robot itself moves in that angle.

Now the question remains, how-will-i-hardwire-computation on a pcb?? I don’t plan to by FPGA kits!! Let me see. Maybe there will be an easier way out to do this too. Or probably an easier way to do the entire thing. How much easier can easier get without doing any research??

Got this link from digg.com. A robot from coat hangers. I hope I have the time to try this out! Here is the link
http://www.streettech.com/robotbook/walkerFinal1.htm

Got this from Make Blog. Quite a few interesting stuff feature here. I wouldn’t say I am a regular here, but today I found this rather interesting robot that can draw (or write, whatever). Thats a real cool idea to try. Here is the link. Cool, ain’t it?

If you had the access to the Electronics for You magazine and you are trying to construct a simple robot, then I recommend you try the June 2006 issue. It contains an interesting article — Remote-Controlled Land Rover—A DIY Robotic Project. This article explains a simple land rover construction. It also has the entire electronics assembly explained along with the PCB layout diagrams. This couls help you start sith something moving at the earliest. You can always add to it, right?

No, these are not videos from some “star trek” kinda movie (at least I hope they aren’t). Well, I found this interesting. Its a robotic leg and has almost all movements of a human leg. More from the same company here. The second bunch are of a robotic arm. The first video is also on their site, here. I think you will like them too.

Hey People,

I do not know if you are into podcasting at all, but more recently after I got my video iPod, I ve become some fan of the whole idea. I set out searching for some interesting stuff on robotics, when I landed here. I ve got all three episodes on my pod and I would suggest you try this too. I am just beginning to listen them. But I am just not going to review anything. The idea is blessed and it should help a lot of enthusiasts. So, no reviews to bias them!

I got another link from a google group on Robotics that I had recently subscribed to recieve some mail. It is here. Maybe you already know about it!

Ok. My Manager used to repeat a question (he was an image processing person for a long time) about the understanding implicit to the human brain. It was this. Show a four year old kid a toy model of a car, tell him it is a car and that kid would just as easily identify all the other road going vehicles as a car. Mind you, he might never call a two-wheeler a car. Maybe he would call a HMV lorry as a car. This, according to him, is a major image recognition problem. How on earth did that kid relate a toy to all those monsters on the road?

I was dweling on this question for some time. Though I am not thoroughly an image processing guy, there are portions of this science that I wish to master and which I believe are perfectly related to robotics as a whole and humanoid in particular. Yes, Machine vision systems. I don’t very much know how all those humanoids already built recognize whatever they do recognize. But, is it someplace possible to mime the way a kid understands and learns something? This is precisely what I ve begun studying now. I haven’t gotten too far yet. Primarily because, I not a student of biology and I don’t quite understand the idea of neurons and their communication paradigms completely yet!

On the other hand, I was attending some lectures on gene mapping. Nothing related to what I do, alright. Some lectures could give insights on how protiens are formed from the huge gene pattern etc.. Again I can’t express much here because of my poor grasp of the subject. But, there could be simpler engineer’s explanation of the whole thing. After all, the last cell is a bunch of some atoms, right? So, a particular group of atoms in particular combinations and conditions emulate what we call “life”. So, can there be a definition for life, in terms of chemistry and physics instead of a whole lot of philosophy? Is there anybody working in these directions? I should love to be there and work along to understand this in its primitives. For, that can surely answer my above question and many more road blocs in constructing a true humanoid. Are there know road blocs to constructing a humanoid, by the way?

After a year, I will be back with my solder iron. I am planning to test and find out the power and torque ratings of the stepper motors that I have. I have managed a good driver circuit form the net. I ll see if it can help move about 2-3 kgs with two motors. I should check out on Servos also. I will push that for the next weekend because, I ll first need to hunt for some cheap servo motor stuff. I am planning to implement a ATMEL microcontroller based circuit to start with. That way I will get some time to choose a decent PC or tablet like mobilis. Heard about PC 104? I did very recently. Wonder what they cost like.

I hope to be posting my experiment results here real soon.

Last post on New Age Ideas is now kinda making me feel dumb. How could I have forgotten Bluetooth and think of WLan?? I have also managed a bunch of developerWorks links for some high level design ideas. You can find some of them in the robotics tag here.

Ok. Last week I was browsing through this Wi Fi for home networks, their setup et al. Interesting and holds a promise for completing my project. All I will need to do is set up a wifi network between my bot and my desktop and bingo, I can even internet enable my bot. Wow. But I wonder what it costs like in India!??! I have just started researching the costs and will have a budget early next week.

Next step would be plan the set up and then complete the n/w code for the bot. Its pretty incomplete too. This time around, I am sticking to Linux. For the project work, we were wasting time with Windows. Its too heavy for a bot, that too a controlled one. Windows was trying to get more intelligent than my code and blowed the whole idea. But then, I did not know even this much Linux during project days!

Ok, that calls for laying out a project development strategy and tools acquisition strategy. I almost have to start from scratch. I only have the four wheels and the frame and one old mother board. I wonder if that board can go alive??? Also, I need to figure out how to get a PC on a battery!? Stupid, right?

Heard of Mobilis? Its a tablet PC from some Indian Co. Costs something like 10 grands. I ll probably get its specs and start from there. That way, I won’t have to worry about the supply details. What says you?