Robot Living

Using a Make controller as the brains, Patrick Adedsso has made a cool little robot.

The robot now sports a Sabertooth 2×10 motor controller, Lynxmotion chassis, Maxbotix ultrsonic sensor and a webcam.

The robot was originally programmed in .NET C# and recently ported to Flex/ Actionscript.  You can check out the actual code here.

The robot also has a remote control mode as well as an autonomous mode.

Check out all the details and more pics at Bedpan Media.

Link via (Make)

It’s all about the drones this week baby, so why not make one yourself?

Over at DIY Drones you can get directions on how to build your own drone for not a lot of money.  They have just released Ardupilot 2.0, software that controls the your drone plane.  Or if planes aren’t your thing, build an autonomous blimp for about $100.  Check out the blimp page at DIY Drones here.  Or you can buy a kit from Make here.

The blimps go by various names such as Light Autonomous Air Vehicle, Blimp Bots, Blubber Bots.  Although blimps seem like they would be fun to make, they don’t seem like they would be good for  carrying a heavy camera.  It’s all about the cameras and spying man.

Check out this helicopter being made by Jose at DIY Drones, complete with camera.

Or you could just shell out $$$ for a Draganflyer.  The Draganflyer 6 has no price listed, just a request a quote form.  But the Draganflyer SAVS model goes for $2,499.  It certainly would be a lot cheaper to build your own drone.   What are you waiting for man?  Get building!

Link

Make  has a great post on robot building clubs.  Probably the largest club  is Astromech, a R2-D2 builders club.

The R2-D2 shown here appeared at the Maker Faire last year and is by Astromech maker Geeman.

Check out the Make article here and go build an R2-D2!

The G-dog robot is a robotic dog kit made by a Japanese company called HTI.  The kit costs approximately $719.00.

The official website states:

Due to 9 small and lightweight servos (9 joints) the G-Dog is capable of various motions including “sit” and “handstand”

The kit comes with 9 servos, NI-MH battery and charger, RPU-11 Processing Unit  and software for programming it.  Optional are a special controller and receiver.

You can buy the kit here .

Video after the break.

Link via (Slashgear)

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The winners of the latest Trossen robotic contest have been announced.  The first place winner shown here is K-9 Autonomous Robot Pet by DJSures.

This homage to Dr Who is completely autonomous. K-9 uses servos for the drivetrain and head, pager motors for ears, LEDs for eyes, a speaker, distance sensor and an LCD.
See all the winners at Trossen Robotics.

See more of this cute little guy in the video after the break.

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