Hi All, got my project website up this weekend. You can see it at fidobot.net.
I’ll be making updates to it on a regular basis now. Looking forward to comments or ideas from you all. I’'m learning tons!
Nice web site HAL9K,
I think the idea of having a very purpose driven bot is a cool idea. Lots of opportunities to solve various problems in reaching an identified goal.
Keep us up to date on progress.
Tinman
Site looks good! Good luck!
I can say that I have a yellow Hex3r and every dog that has seen it move is absolutely terrified of it. Big dogs… rottweilers… cowering in terror.
Very nice looking site HAL9k! well done!
What did you use to make the finger prototype?
Hey, thanks for your positive comments folks. This is going to be alot of fun!
SN96, I used Legos for the prototype. I bought a bunch of the Technic’s kits and use the gears and beams and stuff to work out mechanical ideas. They work really well, they’re durable and reuseable! 
My camera is another story. I took more pictures of the grippers this evening as well as a short movie but the picture and video quality is just bad. Its almost impossible to make out any detail.
The example you see on the web site is one half of the gripper assembly. The other half is composed of a single finger (the one you see in the pics has two) and they oppose and overlap each other. The prototype is designed to cross the the fingers over and under each other using a pair of pneumatic cylinders. As the fingers encounter an object, they use mechanical leverage to fold each of the finger segments around the object, behaving alot like human fingers. There’s also a flat “palm” which adds a surprising degree of stability to gripped objects.
Whats good about this is that the fingers can wrap around irregularly shaped objects like soda bottles, they can finger tip objects (pick up using finger tips only) like pens (fat ones work better) and they can grasp things like ledges. Something thats kind of freaky is shaking hands with them. They actually grip your hand with a reasonably firm grip, and you can feel the hand grip your own. Its kinds of strange. And it only takes a single servomotor to operate.
I’m looking into tactile sensors for the palm and finger segments. I’ve used microswitches on earlier versions to stop the pneumatic pump, with mixed results…basically a numb grip where sometimes the fingers don’t get fully actuated around an object.
I may go ahead an post the movies as they are so folks can see how they operate, but they won’t get much detail until I get a camera that takes better macro shots. 
It took me a while to find on mine, but a lot of digi cams have a macro function that’s disabled by default. If you’ve got mountains vs. flowers, choose flowers 
What a fun Idea! And once he gets retrieving the paper down on sunday maybe he can figure out how to fetch beer on saturday…
I wonder if you couldn’t set him up on a system like they use for the robot soccer tournaments. They have cameras that watch the field and then send directions to the little bots based on preprogrammed responses to ball/opposition position. You may not be able to get your hands on software like that but you could put out some motion detectors that are pointed at where the paper usually ends up and others at where it ‘may’ show up. You could have them on a timer so that they are only sensitive around the time when the paper is supposed to arrive. Then Robo-Fido could limit his search to the area where the sensor(s) have been tripped.
Maybe you could post a hand sketch of what the Pod will look like with the Gripper assembly incorperated…
Your site is really clean and easy to understand. I’m looking forward to following your progress…
The camera is one of those little Casio jobs that is about the size of a credit card and maybe half an inch thick. It writes to an SD card. I went tooling around the menu on it and there is no adjustment for distance, which actually seems kind of odd. It has a digital zoom which sux too. Its great for snapshots and stuff from 3 feet and out, but forget about any kind of close work.
Well, I ended up going out and getting a camera that takes better pictures. Its a huge improvement over the previous pics. I’ve also completed the basic build on my EH3R, loaded a program and tested it using the wireless PS2 controller. It pretty much worked first time. However, I have a bad (loose) battery connection to the servo-controller and so the walking motion was pretty jerky. In fact, the connection on the ServoPod was pretty warm! I think a different set of batteries operating at 6V will do the trick.
I’ve also completed the gripper prototype and have to say that it has exceeded my expectations. That sucker puts a serious squeeze on a water bottle. I’ve got a short video on my site and some pictures as well.
I’'m still wrestling with how to mount the thing tho. Originally I was thinking about using one of the Lynx arms (I may yet) mounted on the top of the Hex, but I really need that real-estate for the sensor array. Another option is slinging the gripper underneath . WTW suggested a scissor mechanism which I think will work quite nicely. But I’ll need just a little more elevation on the lower legs to accomodate the gripper.
im curious HAL9K, did that actuator come with that lego set thing or did u buy it serperate?, cause it looks like its part of those lego sets
The pneumatic actuators? They’re Lego parts. They have reservoirs and pump modules too. I think these came out of one of their large crane kits. I bought the kits for the parts, never built the cranes. 
wow, thats really cool, i didn’t know that they had pneumatic actuators for LEGOS!!! 
thats wicked sick, im gonna check that out
Legos are great for prototyping and just building stuff. I have a rover bot built from legos. But nice work. I have a full pump set including a slipper clutch gear for the switch in case you ever interested in trading.
sounds interesting topher, but i have neither something to trade, or any money, so…