Making a robotic arm is a good introductory project for those wanting to get started with robotics. A simple robot arm can be straight forward to build and would require hobby servo motors to actuate each joint, a control system such as the Arduino, and a power source. Nevertheless, one of the most difficult aspects of such a project is making the mechanical parts that hold the actuators together.
Alexey from robocraft.ru (site in Russian) made his entire robotic arm complete with claw out of Polymorph (a.k.a Shapelock), a low-melting-temperature plastic that can be moulded and manipulated with bare hands. His craftsmanship is remarkable and as shown in his picture log (you will need to use Google translate if you don’t speak Russian), he used many ingenious ways in order to shape the various parts of the arm.
See the robot in action in the videos above and pay particular attention to the control system used. It involves several potentiometers and even more Polymorph.
We all like the World’s Most Useless Machine. For those who do not know what it is, see the video below, it is pretty funny and self-explanatory.
Lately, we saw a more robotic and definitely more moody useless machine. As shown in the video below, this machine is up for a fight. Be sure to watch it through to the end.
If you are already wanting to have your own useless machine, you can get The Most Useless Machine Kit and do it yourself. You can even mod it and give it its own personality.
This insane creation, entirely made out of LEGO, came to us via our forum. Not satisfied with making a single pick-and-place delta robot, Shep built four of them and put them above a conveyor belt and made them sort colored blocks.
The video shows how the four robots sort the blocks quite rapidly and precisely. See a detailed write-up of the project at Shep’s Blog, Tinkernology. This amazing construction was inspired by an equally amazing delta robot by ABB, the Flexpicker. See the Flexpicker in action below (its insane speed makes up for the fact it is not made out of LEGO).
We all dream of having appliances and machines that can obey our spoken commands. Well, let’s take the first step towards making this happen. In this second iteration of Carlitos’ Projects, we are going to build a speech-controlled Arduino-based robot.
You may be thinking that making such a robot must be a very complex task. After all, humans take many years before they can understand speech properly. Well, it is not as difficult as you may think and it is definitely lots of fun. The video below illustrates how to make your own speech-controlled Arduino rover.
After watching the video, read below the detailed list of parts and steps required to complete the project.
An LED. It is not required since the IO expansion shield already has one but it can provide a more visible activity feedback.
An audio jack. It will be used to connect the microphone. This is optional
A headset or a microphone (a microphone is included with the speech recognition module).
Tools
A Wire Cutter. It will be used to cut the leads off components.
A Soldering Iron. In order to solder all the (many) connections, a soldering station might be preferable since it provides steady and reliable temperature control that allows for easier and safer soldering (you have less risk of burning the components if the temperature is set correctly).
A Third Hand. This is not absolutely required, but it is always useful for holding components and parts when soldering.
A Hot-glue gun in order to stick the components together.
Assemble the DFRobotShop Rover and mount the IO expansion shield, an Xbee Module and the LED. Se the picture above or the video for further information.
Solder the headers onto the Xbee shield. Also solder four headers on the prototyping area as shown below. Do not like soldering? Then keep reading since there is no-solder-required version of the project.
Connect the four headers to the corresponding pins as shown below.
As shown above, you can also mount the headphone jack and use the cable included with the microphone in order to connect it to the VRbot module microphone input.
Put the shield onto the Arduino and connect the battery.
Connect the VRbot speech recognition module wires and the microphone.
Start talking to your robot! Say “forward”, “backward”, “left”, or “right” in order to make the robot move in the desired direction. The word “move” shown in the video has been removed from the program in order to improve the performance.
Go Further
Now that you have the basic program you can create new commands in order to build upon this project. For instance, it would be nice to program a “dance” command that would make the rover execute a predefined choreography. It is also possible to use this knowledge to control other devices such as lamps, TV sets, and more.
You can find more information about using the VRbot speech recognition module here:
In our case, we used two of these robots in order to create a ball-fetching challenge at the CRC 2011 with high-school and CEGEP students. As shown below, the students and general public loved the game.
Get your own
RobotShop put together a full kit that you can buy in order to get started with speech control. This kit is a bit different than the project shown and does not require any soldering and uses the microphone included with the VRbot module:
