Category Archives: robotics

Robot Solves Sudoku on Paper

Posted on July 10, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Sudoku is a great way to pass some time, especially on a long flight. However, we don’t think the airlines will let [Sanahm] board with his sudoku-solving robot. The basic machine looks like a 2D plotter made with aluminum extrusion, with the addition of a Raspberry Pi and a camera. The machine can read a sudoku puzzle, solve it, and then fill in the puzzle with a pen. Unlike humans, it should never need to erase its work.

The software uses OpenCV to process the camera data, find the grid, and the cells provided by the puzzle. TensorFlow recognizes the …read more

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Posted in Arduino Hacks, opencv, Raspberry Pi, robotics, sudoku, tensorflow | Leave a comment

Watch the ClearWalker Light Up and Dip Its Toes

Posted on June 1, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

[Jeremy Cook]’s latest take on the Strandbeest, the ClearWalker, is ready to roll! He’s been at work on this project for a while, and walks us through the electronics and control system as well as final assembly tweaks. The ClearWalker is fully controllable and includes a pan and tilt camera as well as programmable LED segments, and even a tail.

When we last saw [Jeremy] at work on this design, it wasn’t yet functional. He showed us all the important design and assembly details that went into creating a motorized polycarbonate version of [Theo Jansen’s] classic Strandbeest design; there’s far …read more

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Posted in ClearWalker, cnc, FPV, jeremy cook, led strip, polycarbonate, robotics, robots hacks, strandbeest, walker | Leave a comment

Hackaday Prize Entry: Modular Stepper Control

Posted on May 12, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Stepper motors are a great solution for accurate motion control. You’ll see them on many 3D printer designs since they can precisely move each axis. Steppers find uses in many robotics projects since they provide high torque at low speeds.

Since steppers are used commonly used for multi-axis control systems, it’s nice to be able to wire multiple motors back to a single controller. We’ve seen a few stepper control modules in the past that take care of the control details and accept commands over SPI, I2C, and UART. The AnanasStepper 2.0 is a new stepper controller that uses CAN …read more

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Posted in can-bus, motors, robotics, stepper, The Hackaday Prize | Leave a comment

Robotic Glockenspiel and Hacked HDD’s Make Music

Posted on May 2, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

[bd594] likes to make strange objects. This time it’s a robotic glockenspiel and hacked HDD‘s. [bd594] is no stranger to Hackaday either, as we have featured many of his past projects before including the useless candle or recreating the song Funky town from Old Junk.

His latest project is quite exciting. He has incorporated his robotic glockenspiel with a hacked hard drive rhythm section to play audio controlled via a PIC 16F84A microcontroller. The song choice is Axel-F. If you had a cell phone around the early 2000’s you were almost guaranteed to have used this song as a ringtone …read more

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Posted in digital audio hacks, digital music, hard drive speaker, mechanical music, robot, robot musician, robotic glockspiel, robotics, robots hacks | Leave a comment

Tying Knots with Industrial Robots

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

We’re not ashamed to admit that we desperately want a pair of high-end industrial robot arms to play around with. We don’t know where we’d put them — maybe the living room? — but we know that we’d figure something out.
This demo aims to get Boy Scouts interested in robotics by applying the beastly arms to something that all kids love, learning to tie knots. (If you ask us, they’ve got it backwards.) Anyway, there are two videos embedded below for you to peek at.

In case you haven’t thought about knot tying, it’s actually a neat problem for …read more

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Posted in demo, knot tying, robot arm, robotics, robots hacks | Leave a comment

Lego Boosts Their Robotic Offering

Posted on January 21, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

Kids often have their first exposure to robots in school using Lego Mindstorm kits. Now Lego is rolling out Boost — a robotic kit targeting all Lego builders from 7 years old and up. The kit is scheduled to be on the market later this year (it appeared at the recent CES) and will sell for about $160.

[The Brothers Brick] had a chance to try the kit out at CES (see the video below) and you might find their review interesting. The kit provides parts and instructions to build five different models: a cat, a robot, a guitar, a …read more

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Posted in boost, ces, lego, lego boost, Microcontrollers, robotics, robots hacks | Leave a comment

Taking First Place at IMAV 2016 Drone Competition

Posted on January 11, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

The IMAV (International Micro Air Vehicle) conference and competition is a yearly flying robotics competition hosted by a different University every year. AKAMAV – a university student group at TU Braunschweig in Germany – have written up a fascinating and detailed account of what it was like to compete (and take first place) in 2016’s eleven-mission event hosted by the Beijing Institute of Technology.

AKAMAV’s debrief of IMAV 2016 is well-written and insightful. It covers not only the five outdoor and six indoor missions, but also details what it was like to prepare for and compete in such an intensive …read more

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Posted in autonomous drone, autonomous quadcopter, autonomous robot, competition, conference, drone, drone hacks, flying robot, gps, IMAV, mapping, Pix4D, PixHawk, robotics | Leave a comment