Triquad
IEEE Spectrum:
As cool as quadrotors are, in most cases they're simply not as good as helicopters. Because of the way they're designed (with four small rotors instead of one big one), they're less powerful, less efficient, and less maneuverable. The power and efficiency issues come from the fact that one big rotor generates more lift per aircraft footprint than four small rotors, and as for maneuverability, a helicopter that can alter rotor pitch instantly will always outmaneuver a quadrotor that can only control blade speed. Seriously, try doing this with a quadrotor.
So, the thing that quadrotors have going for them is that they're simple. Helicopters have complex main rotor heads, with shafts and bearings and linkages all over the place, while quadrotors just have four motors and that's it. The University of Queensland researchers came up with a "Y4" configuration that aims to take all the good bits of helicopters and make them as simple as quadrotors. I'm just going to start calling this new design a triquad. Keep in mind that this is still a quadrotor: it just had things shifted around a little bit.
Almost all of the triquad's lift comes from its big main fixed-pitch rotor, located at the center of the "Y" (pictured below). The three little fixed-pitch rotors in the "Y" configuration are angled (at a fixed 45 degrees) to provide counter-torque (which they do slightly more efficiently than a helicopter tail rotor) along with pitch and roll control. Here's how the control works... cont'd at IEEE Spectrum
Follow up discussions:
DIY Drones post and discussion.
Hackernews post.
Complete videos from the IROS 2013 workshop: "Understanding Robotics and Public Opinion Workshop From IROS 2013"
Robohub.org article with all videos or straight youtube playlist link .
littleBits
littleBits :
littleBits makes an opensource library of electronic modules that snap together with tiny magnets for prototyping, learning, and fun.
What is littleBits? from littleBits on Vimeo .
New Video of ACM-R5H Snake Robot
HiBot :
The new ACM-R5H swimming in a new pool. It is fully customizable in its colors (fins and body) and in the electronics that may be fitted in the front and rear unit.
The robot length can be also easily changed by adding or removing units, in this case it is a version of 6 active joints.
Fuelmatics Automatic Refueling System
S4A: Scratch modification for Arduino
S4A:
Scratch for Arduino (S4A) is a modified version of Scratch , ready to interact with Arduino boards.
Supported boards
S4A works with Arduino Diecimila, Duemilanove and Uno. Other boards haven't been tested, but they may also work.
Connectivity
Components have to be connected in a particular way. S4A allows for 6 analog inputs (analog pins), 2 digital inputs (digital pins 2 and 3), 3 analog outputs (digital pins 5, 6 and 9), 3 digital outputs (pins 10, 11 and 13) and 4 special outputs to connect Parallax continuous rotation servomotors (digital pins 4, 7, 8 and 12).
You can manage a board wirelessly by attaching an RF module to it, such as Xbee.
S4A allows you to control as many boards as USB ports you have.
Compatibility
S4A is backwards compatible with Scratch, so you can open Scratch projects in it. However, you won't be able to share your projects on the Scratch community website because doing so goes against the Scratch terms of use.
Take in account that this compatibility doesn't work both ways, so you won't be able to open an S4A project from within the original Scratch.
Using a PicoBoard along with an Arduino board is also supported... cont'd
The Poppy Project
The Poppy Project :
OPEN SOURCE
Both software and hardware are available under an open source licence for academics, artists and geeks.
EASY TO REPAIR AND DUPLICATE
Poppy only uses off-the-shelf components (motors and electronics) and limbs that can be printed with regular 3D printing services.
OPTIMIZED FOR BIPED LOCOMOTION
Poppy’s body has a morphology modeling human skeleton: bended legs, multi-articulated trunk, soft body. This increases robustness, agility and stability during the walking.
AFFORDABLE
The overall materials needed to build your own Poppy robot costs around 7500€ ($10500, including motors, electronics and 3D printed parts). We hope the community will find ways to build and use even cheaper solutions.
Introducing UBR-1
Introducing UBR-1 from Unbounded Robotics on Vimeo .
UBR-1 Robot From Unbounded Robotics Revolutionizes Affordable Mobile Manipulation
Unbounded has been working in stealth mode for the past year, but our best guess was that they were developing a low-cost mobile manipulator for research and education: something like a PR2, except (we were hoping) significantly cheaper. Today, Unbounded is unveiling UBR-1, a shiny new human-scale one-armed robot designed to completely revolutionize the market for research and education robotics and beyond, for just a tiny fraction of the cost of similar platforms.
UBR-1 is a 13-DoF mobile robot that includes a 7-DoF arm. It navigates with a laser scanner in its base, and uses a PrimeSense 3D sensor in its head for perception. Thanks to a torso lift, the robot can pick objects up off the floor, and put them onto tables and countertops. It's got a beefy computer in the torso, along with two big fat batteries that'll keep it running for up to 5 hours continuously, or up to 10 if it's not moving around too much, and you can get a charging dock so that you never have to plug it in. UBR-1 runs ROS, and comes out of the box with the ability to navigate and interact with objects. And (arguably) the most important spec of all is that UBR-1 starts at just $35,000, which is wicked cheap for a robot this capable.
UAV Textbook Delivery Service
Australia-based Zookal and Flirtey want to deliver textbooks to people in Sydney using aerial drones:
New Boston Dynamics Videos
Introducing WildCat:
Legged Robot Testing in Desert:
Atlas Update:
Arduino Galileo From Intel And Arduino TRE From TI
Official Intel Datasheet :
Galileo is a microcontroller board based on the Intel® Quark SoC X1000 Application Processor, a 32-bit Intel Pentium-class system on a chip. It is the first board based on Intel® architecture designed to be hardware and software pin-compatible with Arduino shields designed for the Uno R3. Digital pins 0 to 13 (and the adjacent AREF and GND pins), Analog inputs 0 to 5, the power header, ICSP header, and the UART port pins (0 and 1), are all in the same locations as on the Arduino Uno R3. This is also known as the Arduino 1.0 pinout.
In addition to Arduino hardware and software compatibility, the Galileo board has several PC industry standard I/O ports and features to expand native usage and capabilities beyond the Arduino shield ecosystem. A full sized mini-PCI Express slot, 100Mb Ethernet port, Micro-SD slot, RS-232 serial port, USB Host port, USB Client Port, and 8 MByte NOR flash come standard on the board.
Available Nov 29 for under $60
Arduino Blog :
Arduino TRE, based on the Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex-A8 processor is the “most powerful Arduino to date” and the first that will be able to run “full Linux.”
Thanks to the 1-GHz Sitara AM335x processor, Arduino developers get up to 100 times more performance with the Sitara-processor-based TRE than they do on the Arduino Leonardo or Uno. This performance opens the doors to more advanced Linux-powered applications. The Sitara-processor-based Linux Arduino can run high-performance desktop applications, processing-intensive algorithms or high-speed communications.
The Arduino TRE is expected to be available in spring 2014
IEEE Spectrum Tours NASA's Drone Research Lab
IEEE Spectrum:
The Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) is located approximately in the middle of nowhere, inside Edwards Air Force Base on a huge dry lake bed out in the Mojave desert. The remoteness of the area, plus the availability of over 100 square kilometers of empty flat lake bed to land on if necessary, makes Dryden a fantastic place to test out all kinds of futuristic and occasionally bizarre aircraft. And we got to meet a few of them... cont'd
Microduino: Arduino Compatible Hardware The Size Of A Quarter
Kickstarter:
The Microduino series is a 100% Arduino compatible open source hardware, compatible with Arduino IDE development environment and existing Arduino sketches.
MICRODUINO IS SMALL
Microduino is small. Its size is about a quarter (25.40mm X 27.94mm / 1.0inch X 1.1inch), much smaller than the original Arduino board.
MICRODUINO IS STACKABLE
All Microduino boards adopt a uniform U-shape 27-pin standard pin-out (UPin-27). Thus Microduino series can be easily stacked together through the UPin-27, and all modules are delivered ready to stack... cont'd
ABB Robotics Pack Expo 2013 Exhibit Highlights New 8kg IRB 360 Flexpicker
ABB Robotics:
High Speed Picking Demo
The centerpiece of the high speed picking demo is the new 8 kg IRB 360 FlexPicker with a Schmalz vacuum gripper, simulating a carton loading application by picking five liquid filled plastic bottles in a single cycle, and placing them on a conveyor. A 1 kg FlexPicker model uses vision guidance and conveyor tracking to individually pick the randomly positioned bottles off the conveyor, and place them in uniform groups back on the initial conveyor to continue the loop. Both FlexPicker models utilize ABB's PickMaster 3 software, which integrates conveyor tracking, advanced vision guidance and vision inspection capabilities in an easy-to-use programming platform... cont'd
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