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All Robotics Articles
Robotics: In Closing - Stanford's ML ClassIt's been long coming, but I finally got my "Statement of Accomplishment" from Professor Ng at Stanford today. Many of us were waiting with baited breath; I was already sure of my score, but I was curious to see how the statement looked, and how it was scored...
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Robotics: Weeks 9 & 10 - Stanford's ML ClassI'm so late on this due to a number of reasons, but I thought I would combine them both in one article; to put it bluntly, Week 9 (Anomaly Detection/Recommender Systems) looked to be easy at first, but I got bogged down in the homework, while Week 10 (Large Scale Machine Learning/Application Example: Photo OCR) is looking to be a "gimme" week, though it started late.
Robotics: Week 8 - Stanford's ML Class - Another Easy Week?Well, this was surprising to me: Despite this week being another "dual unit" week (something I was dreading, given my last experience with such a week), I actually found it to be fun, interesting, and anything but difficult! What were the units?
- Unit 13 - Clustering (K-means)
- Unit 14 - Dimensionality Reduction (ie, Principal Component Analysis)
Robotics: Week 7 - Stanford's ML Class - Easy WeekWeek 7 seems to have been the "easiest" week yet (ok, maybe the first week was easier?). One would think learning about and applying Support Vector Machines would be more difficult, but it didn't seem that way to me...
Robotics: Week 6 - Stanford's ML ClassWell - this was an interesting week of fun and mayhem; I thought I had it all covered until I started in on the review questions...
Robotics: Week 5 - Stanford's ML ClassWell, I "survived" another week of Stanford's ML class - Week 5 was all about back-propagation and how to implement it.
Robotics: Week 4 - Stanford's ML ClassBetween plugging away at finding a new job and working on the class, all-in-all, the week turned out ok - well, with the exception of our dog dying...
Robotics: Week 3 - Stanford's AI and ML ClassesWell, as you know, this week was a major change for me; I won't go into any specifics there, but it did make me have to drop the AI class, unfortunately...
Robotics: John McCarthy (1927-2011) has passed away...John McCarthy, a distinguished computer scientist who coined the term "artificial intelligence", and was also the inventor of Lisp, has passed away at the age of 84.
Robotics: Week 2 - Stanford's AI and ML ClassesWell - I'm still involved in both courses, and I haven't killed anyone yet, even though at times I felt like it!
Robotics: My First Week - Stanford's AI and ML ClassesI'm currently signed up and taking both of these courses, which started this past Monday:
Intro to AI
Machine Learning Both complement each other as far as material goes, and I'm having fun, but this is all still clearly an experiment by Stanford...
Machine Learning Both complement each other as far as material goes, and I'm having fun, but this is all still clearly an experiment by Stanford...
Robotics: How To Use An Analog Joystick With The ArduinoAnalog joysticks are fairly easy to hook up and use with the Arduino. In this tutorial, I will describe the basics of hooking up such a joystick to the Arduino, and give some hints and tips on using the position values read from the potentiometers to control a basic vehicle using Ackermann Steering geometry, as well as to control a vehicle using Differential Steering geometry (like on a tank or bulldozer). Pictures and code provided!
Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 6 - The H-Bridge Driver)In order for the Arduino I am using to command the steering motor to move left and right, I need to control the motor with a circuit known as an "h-bridge". Basically, this is a circuit that switches current to the motor to make it rotate in one direction or the other, at will (it also allows for easy speed control via PWM - but we won't need that here).
Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 5 - Limit Switches)I'd already ruined one good motor (which ultimately turned into three), through the misadventure of driving the motor to the end of travel in the steering mechanism, causing binding and ultimately destruction of the gears. The only way to prevent this moving forward was to install limit switches.
Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 4 - Adding Feedback)In order for the robot to know how far and in which direction it is turning, it needs to have some method of feedback from the steering mechnism to tell it at what angle the wheels are. This is the basic principle behind all servo-mechanisms. For my Unmanned Ground Vehicle (URV), I decided to use a potentiometer for the feedback element. Properly wired, it can tell the UGV what angle the wheels are at (with a certain error percentage, of course).
Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 3 - A New Mechanism)The motors finally arrived, so I could now continue with the steering mechanism...
Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 2 - How To Really Break A Motor)As I noted in the last article, I had only spent $10.00 on a motor that the original manufacturer wanted me to spend $350.00 for a bunch of gears, of which I only needed one. Don't get me wrong; the fact that they were willing to sell to me at all impressed me, and if I had a bunch of the motors instead of the three I did own (not to mention if they were new, and not well used like mine), it might've been worth it. Needless to say, though, their offer wasn't enticing, so I decided to do what anyone else in my position would do - SWAP, SWAP, SWAP!
Robotics: Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - How to Build a Steering Mechanism...Or Not (Part 1 - First Attempt)Once again, its been a while (but not as long as last time!); progress is still being made.
Since my last post, I've been working on the front-end steering mechanism; let's just say either this is harder than it looked when I started, or I'm just not that good of a mechanic. Likely, it's both!
Robotics: An Unmanned Ground Vehicle Project - An UpdateIt's been quite a while since I last posted an update regarding this project, but progress is still being made, if slowly. The last time anything was posted on this project...wow, has it been almost two years?! Ugh...
Robotics: The Smithsonian Robo-Arm/Bio-ArmHere's yet another re-release of the Tomy/Radio Shack Armatron robot arm...
Robotics: The Armabot - Interfacing the Armatron to the Radio Shack Color ComputerI found yet another article on interfacing the Armatron - this time to a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer! This article first appeared in the April 1984 issue of Color Computer magazine, and was written by Steve Cox (et al).
Robotics: Up in arms - Tandy Armatron DissectionHere's a nice disassembly/teardown "review" of a Tandy Armatron, featuring really nice and large pictures of the various gearing internals. This might be useful to those hacking their Armatron for interfacing to a computer...
Robotics: The Big Trak is back?Do you remember being a kid in the 80s, watching the Milton Bradley Big Trak commercial, and wanting one yourself, just so you could have an apple brought to you?
Robotics: Another Armatron Interfacing How-ToWhile googling for something else, I recently ran across this interesting article that depicts an alternative method of controlling the Armatron.
Robotics: Doh! Missed one...I just found this interesting PDF, which describes a direct-drive motor interface to the Armatron using steppers (check out what those students did to that poor robot)...
Robotics: The Discovery Spark Robot ArmI just found out about this robot arm as I was doing some research -after- I had posted my archive! Argh!
Robotics: The Tomy/Radio Shack Armatron Super Interfacing ArchiveThis archive was created in an attempt to bring together several sources of information that have floated through time (and the internet) detailing how to interface the Tomy/Radio Shack Armatron (and Super Armatron) to a computer. I hope you enjoy this archive as much as I had compiling it!
Robotics: Gismo the Great (from Boys Life magazine)Gismo was a robot from another time; a time when boys played with electric motors and train sets, with maybe an occasional "Cowboys and Indians" game outside thrown in...
Robotics: A Computer Controlled TankEver play with (or own) a Milton Bradley Big Trak? Ever wanted to control it with a computer? Want to interface your Arduino with one? Read this "future past" article to find out how!
Robotics: I was an 18-foot robot!So begins an interesting article found in a scan of a fairly old copy of Popular Mechanics; in this article, you quickly learn that the science and art of "Giant Robots" is much older than you think...
Robotics: Some Interesting Sites for the Homemade UGV ProjectThis article serves to document some of the interesting and useful sites both I have found during research - read on for more!
Robotics: Our Homemade Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV): A New DirectionWell, it's official: I am going a new direction in the development of the UGV. A friend from my work, Jared Hurn, has decided to assist me in the development and programming of the robot. We hope to eventually be able to enter it into the Robo-Magellan contest, if not the one next year, then the year after. Read on for more about this exciting new direction the project has taken!
Robotics: Homemade UGV/ROV Pan-Tilt Mechanism in Action!I made a small, low-quality video of the pan-tilt mechanism of my UGV/ROV today. The servos are currently controlled via an R/C transmitter; in the future everything will be controlled with a Basic Stamp 2.
Robotics: Programming the Parallax BASIC Stamp 2 using LinuxThose of you following along know that my current project is the design and construction of a homebrew UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle). I intend to control it using a BASIC Stamp 2 OEM microcontroller module I constructed (see my assembly primer (new window) for more details). So, once I had the module built, I then needed some way to program it...
Robotics: Status on my ROV, err - UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle)I just wanted to post a short "status update" on where my ROV project stood. First off, I am sure you notice the name change...
Robotics: The Basic Stamp 2 OEM Assembly PrimerI wrote this primer for those out there who may need some extra visual and written explanation to the assembly manual which is included with the Basic Stamp 2 OEM kit (new window) from Parallax.
Robotics: Robot Maxamilian - A $600.00 Android HeadNeed a head for your android? Want to explore vision processing? Just want something new and strange to put on desk, to annoy passersby? Then this may be the project for you!
Robotics: Robot Intelligence: An Interview With A PioneerI recently had the pleasure to conduct a short and informal email interview
with a pioneer in the field of hobbyist robotics, David L. Heiserman.
Robotics: A Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) ProjectTHE CONCEPT:
In the early part of 2005, I began the design and construction of an ROV based on the chassis of a 1/6-scale radio-controlled toy monster truck. Utilizing this and other various items, I managed to implement a working - if not very elegant - ROV system. Though I never obtained any video of it in operation, I did manage to document its construction with a series of photographs.
| Recent Robotics Images | ||
 K-means Lenna Questions or Comments? |  The Analog Joystick Questions or Comments? |  06_L298_complete Questions or Comments? |
 05_L298_sidetwo Questions or Comments? |  04_L298_soldered Questions or Comments? |  03_L298_sideone Questions or Comments? |
 02_L298_bb_jig Questions or Comments? |  01_L298_parts Questions or Comments? |  08_limitswitches_installed Questions or Comments? |