Natural robot arm control (similar to a telemetry suit)

Hello,

I finally completed a video of my custom robot arm controller last night. The input arm was built using aluminum bars bent to shape. Each shape matches the dimensions of the robot arm for a 1:1 movement effect (needs some tweaking).

With the custom joystick the arm is very easy to control. See a short video of the arm in operation here:
youtube.com/watch?v=zZwnyZPkylk

The input arm on the left shows up as a standard windows joystick. The signals from the JS are fed into a piece of software that inverts or scales the movements as needed and then sends the proper signals to a servo controller on the arm.

I will have a tutorial on how to create your own custom up soon. Thanks for looking.

Hi HakBot,

Really cool! Nice custom joystick you’ve build!! The movement from the joystick are very need converted to smooth movements in the robotic arm! Thanks for sharing! 5 starts on youtube :wink:

Xan

Nicely done. 8)

Wow! Very fun to watch!

Taht looks awesome

I can’t wait to see the tutorial, where will it be posted?

I love it!

You’ve inspired me to try something I’ve been wanting to do. I took a plain old 422 servo (311 would work too) and removed the control board. I soldered the two motor leads together and soldered the servo wire to the pot. Servo to Pot, yellow to yellow, red to red, and black to green. When you plug this into an analog input it gives you a nice 0 to 5vdc to the input when you move the servos output shaft. The reason I soldered the motor leads together is it provides friction and holding power to the servo. So I tested it using this simple program for the basic atom 28 for IDE 2.2.1.1.

[code]servo1 var word
sound 9, [100\880, 100\988, 100\1046, 100\1175]
low 0

start:
adin AX0,2,AD_RON, servo1
;serout S_OUT,i57600,[dec3 servo1\3," "]
servo1 = (servo1 * 2)+500
pulsout 0,servo1
pause 20
goto start[/code]

Here is a youtube video of it in action. Now I need to build an arm using these 422 servos to test the full assembly. This is fun! 8)

youtube.com/watch?v=5E7_cVDG4tA

Instead of using the pot in the servo, couldn’t you just use a linear 0-5k pot, with the pot input being supplied 5v from the board, wiper connected to the board analog input, and output connected to ground?

Thanks guys!

Here is the tutorial: endurance-robotics.com/media/Creating%20Custom%20Joysticks%20with%20the%20AnalogReader.pdf I have created a PDF for now but it will be posted in a special tutorials section on the main site once I have my admin perform some edits.

Hey Jim thats very cool. It reminds me of what another guy is doing with his robot called BrainBot. I have always wondered though, can a standard servo can successfully be modified to provide feedback while still functional?

In the past I’ve tinkered with gamepad/joystick gizmos like below to provide an inexpensive way to input analog data into the computer via windows gameport. It would be interesting to see if the chip used in the bottom joypad has unused analog inputs.

tinyurl.com/5rztat
geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=QF-668U&cat=JOY
geeks.com/details.asp?invtid … K2&cat=JOY

geeks.com/details.asp?invtid … -N&cat=JOY

edit: the super joy box 8 below should provide for 16 analog inputs. I have one and will check it out soon.

ztnetstore.com/product_info. … cts_id=402

Yes of course. But what I’m describing here is an easy way to make an animatronic teach pendant that looks exactly like the bot being controlled. The pro chip has 8 analog inputs so a BRAT or arm would be easy to implement. :wink:

Yes it’s been done before. You can read the pot wiper while the servo is in operation.

any photographic images of the servo mod?

would this work with HS-475 Servos?

Here is the procedure. Do you really need an image? :stuck_out_tongue: Yes it will work with a 475, but it’s more expensive then the 422…

no thats fine, just thought you may have archived it somewhere.
just started the mod!

if i find anything interesting ill post it.

Very impressive.

With the addition of RoboRealm and cameras, you could take this to another level.

should wire a pair of them to the legs of a chicken and use it to capture smooth scout gait sequences… :unamused:

I think it can, I messed with this code a little, but I still think my math is off

I also used hservo instead of pulseout

[code]servo1 var slong
ENABLEHSERVO

main

adin 2,servo1

servo1 = (servo1 -512)*20

HSERVO [0\servo1\0]
pause 20

goto main
end
[/code]

Edit: I didnt read the entire thread (noob move), Robot Dude answered that question.