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I have always wanted to build my own biped robot ever since I saw the Honda robot. My biped uses 3deg. of freedom per leg and is equipped with fully functioning arms and grippers. What's unique about this project; the billet aluminum head that I designed and had custom machined. Like the arms and gripper, the head was designed to be fully functional as well. For example, the eye sockets are 16.3mm I.D. so I can mount Parallax's PING sensors in the head chassis. I have done this already by desoldering the sensors from the board using lengths of 26 gauge wires to resolder the sensors back to the board, which allows me to mount the sensor board in any location I choose. It worked fine, however, there was interference with the bridge of the nose. To fix this problem, I need to machine custom tubes to evenly shroud the sensors.
PING TESTING:
The aluminum head also has the following features:
- 10mm holes on each side to mount two electret microphones for sensing sound in its
environment
Software testing of the ears:
Lexan Servo Bracket, custom designed and laser cut. Thanks Lynxmotion.
Video showing sound sensing and SpeakJet working together:
- 36mm mylar speaker pocket designed to mount a speaker in the underside of the head
The custom Robotic sensor board that controls sound sensors, PING, SpeakJet, and memsic tilt sensor. Unfortunately, this board was toasted due to my carelessness. I reversed polarity on the power leads and a new board needs to be built.
I really need to pick up a BRAT... would love to build it as a reverse leg bot and build a mini-mech out of it. Too bad I have my eyes set on a Bioloid kit next~
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Andrew Alter Trossen Robotics
Hardware Support & Technical Writer
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What exactly are you using the PING sensors for? They look really neat in the eye sockets, but I'm curious on their role in the system.
Did you build this custom board? If so, could you talk about your experiences with developing the board?
Care to elaborate on the software a bit?
The ping sensors were for distance sensing. unfortunately, the sensors installed in the head did not work properly due to interference with the nose bridge. In order for the PING sensor to work properly, I found out that a tube needs to shroud the sensor evenly so the sonar is more focused. It worked well by using black construction paper curled in to 3/4" tubes and slipped over the sensors. I was not happy with this configuration so I removed them and used red LEDs for now.
The Robotic Sensor Control Unit (I called it RSCU for short) was originally designed to cut down on the mess sensors and wires can create. With bipeds there is very little real-estate for sensors unlike rovers. I decided that I wanted to custom build a board that will allow me to have all the sensors I wanted for my biped, in one neat package. Since I wanted my head to see, hear, and speak evil, a board was required to bring it all together.
The board has 3 main features for making the bot head come to life.
- SpeakJet circuit for producing speech. The SpeakJet has optional event pins that could be used with sensors. One example is the memsic sensor, where if the bot tilts to much to one side or another, a pin could be made to go "HIGH" thus calling an event that produces the phrase "Woooah!"
- Sound sensor. I had help from other members in the community to develop a simple circuit that would allow me to make my bot react to sound. I used Parallax's ADC0832 demo code to take the output of both mics and compare voltage levels. The mic with the greater voltage sensed the loudest sound.
- Memsic tilt sensor. Used for detecting orientation. With the tilt sensor, I can detect if the bot is on its back, front or leaning to much to one side or the other.
- Port for the ping sensor. This has no built in circuitry, it's only purpose was to allow quick and ease detachment of the bot head. With a port, I can simply unplug the ping wires if I need to remove the head without having to mess with anything else.
The PC board went through 5 prototypes after a bread board design, each one with improvements on the last. Some changes were just silkscreen errors, other changes were component routing errors and finally adding some component changes. The biggest improvement was the addition of the cap for the audio amp to provide more amplification. I used Eagle Cad to design my boards and BatchPCB.com to produce the fabs.
The Bratinator is using Lynxmotion's SSC-32 servo controller connected to Lynxmotions Mini ABBII. MCU of choice is the AtomPRO.
For the sequences I am using Lynxmotions SSC-32 Visual Sequencer which really helps design complex moves and sequences.
I vote The Bratinator to be the biped with the most attitude and personality! Everytime I see this biped walk or perform, I marvel at what Mike has accomplished. I would love to incorporate the hearing aspect so my robot could follow the loudest sound(s) in its environment. I also very much want to add a speech synthesizer.
Well done, Mike!!
8-Dale
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I can handle complexity. It's the simple things that confound me.
Do everything in moderation, ESPECIALLY, moderation..
Sometimes the only way to win, is not to play.. -- Stephen Falken
SN96: Well done, I love it, I am also doing a biped Mech ED209 and would love to get this to walk like a mech, so I have some work cut out for myself. Again well done.
__________________ People yearn after this robotic dream, but you can't strip your life of all meaning, emotion and feeling and expect to function.
The Bratinator Project
in your last movie.
Re: The Bratinator Project
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