This is a project i’ve been working on for well over a year now in my spare time. It’s design is based on a 3D model I did ages ago and used as my profile pic on various sites (including this one) ever since. It’s very much a work in progress and can only walk forward, but it’s getting there.
Check it out:
It uses a combination of Lynxmotion SES parts and custom aluminium plates for the body and legs. All servos are HS-645MG’s, controlled by an ARC-32 running a custom assembly program I’ve been developing that allows it to playback keyframed animations on the fly. It doesn’t do any onboard IK yet, thats going to be performed by a Parallax Propellor chip I already have mounted. High level operations will be handled by the Arduino Mega ADK mounted on the top layer.
Other features include all the RGB LED’s shown in the video (these too are controlled by the same animation system as the servos), an audio subsystem (including MP3 player, Audio Amp and 60mm Loudspeaker mounted on the bottom), Contact Switches (not wired up yet), and a Bluetooth connection to a PS3 wireless controller.
Yea, pretty much everything thats raw alluminium is custom. I designed them all in CAD software and my father cut them out by hand (very accurately I must say).
As I briefly mentioned before, the underside of the bot houses the loudspeaker. I did originally try using a more discrete unit but the sound was terrible, fine for beeps and buzzes but not much else. This one was ripped out of an unused surround sound system, so other than a lack of low end (it is a tweeter after all) it works pretty well. I’ve already tested it with various tracks and Portal turret sounds
Around the speaker is this hollow PCB. It was my first PCB so doesn’t do much, simply acts as a conduit for sending power and I2C to the legs, as well as receiving contact switch state and ultrasonic range data (i’ve got 6 MaxSonars waiting to be mounted). Oh, and the board itself has 3 sockets for smart LED’s. I’m going full out on this DiscoBot idea .
And to achieve that here is the audio PCB, containing the amp, two of these, and a Big LED holder (purely because the LED in question has NO mounting holes whatsoever, Grrr).
Thats the progress so far, still loads to do hardware and software side, but as with all these kind of things its the journey that is more important than the destination .
What an interesting project! The concept is imaginative, and the workmanship is superb (both your’s and your father’s). So what if it can only walk forward, who’s going to argue with it in a dark alley at night - especially if you play AK-47 sounds through the speaker?
Please keep the updates and videos coming. Congratulations!
Thanks for the comments guys More videos are definitely to come, once I can borrow my parents HD camera again.
This project has been a long time coming. There’s been months where I’ve not made progress on it at all, instead playing games like any normal person would of an evening . It’s only now that everything is starting to slot together
Speaking of which, the latest parts to have arrived are for the head mount:
I plan to attach an IR distance sensor to this as well as a VGA camera (this one) to this mount. Obviously I don’t expect the bot itself to do much in the way of image processing but I think it would be good if it could take images and relay them to an external PC.
I like how you solved the coxa parts. The legs are 4 DOF but i can’t see much movement on the 2. servo on the femur (the tibia servo?), could it be solved by a fixed position or do you plan to write a 4 DOF IK code?
Your father did a nice job hand cutting all those parts, well done! The brushed parts looks good.
I’m actually using the same DOF solver concept I showcased in this old video.
My PC runs this for all motions I want the robot to do, and then creates animation data that I upload to the ARC-32. I did try to make the ARC run it on board but even with heavily optimised assembly I could only manage 2 updates per second.
As you notice, I do need to add a contact angle parameter or something to the solver though to adjust that 2nd servo angle.
They all turned out really well, despite him moaning about their complexity
It’s been quite a while since my last project update. I’ve been sorting things out for my second time at University so had very little free time to focus on Infuser . Last week was ‘Fresher’s Week’, which on my schedule was rather light, so I took the opportunity to get some more custom PCB’s made and mounted, this time on the legs.
It was always my intention to get some PCB’s for the legs but I never got around to it for the first video. The board itself is rather simple (just routes connections), but it allows me to mount a SmartLED and an Ultrasound sensor to each leg, and connect to the ground contact switch. The ribbon cable that connects into it carries power, i2c, and returns either analog or pwm from the ultrasound and the switch state up to the body. Here’s a shot of all of the legs with the boards mounted.
I plan to use the ultrasounds for object avoidance, but I could also turn Infuser into a sentry bot that will play loud noises and flash all it’s light when it detects intruders .
That’s all for now, next thing I want to do is mount a camera onto the head Pan/Tilt but I haven’t come up with a cool way to do that yet.
it’s great…
i want your advice please if i have robot BH3_R , i want master thesis on motion on it using intelligent and matlab
could you help me plz on references . or programs any advice say it please
thanks
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. Last week was ‘Fresher’s Week’, which on my schedule was rather light, so I took the opportunity to get some more custom PCB’s made and mounted, this time on the legs.
