It is exactly the catchiest name I’ve heard (but volumes better than "Qrio"), but Wakamaru is the latest in Japan’s bid to take over the world with robots. That and help out their rapidly aging population.

Wakamaru, weighing in at 30kg, 3ft tall, and anywhere from $9,000 to $14,000 USD (Wired says $9,000, BBC says $14,000), better be something special. And, if all the claimed features are true, it is.

Wakamaru’s website has pictures and videos of the friendly yellow robot. It has a claimed battery life of 2 hrs and a slew of sensors, including 2 cameras (front mounted and omnidirectional), 4 microphones, and touch sensors. He also has 2 4 DOF arms. But, before you rush out and buy one take note that it won’t work well on surfaces with more than 1cm of unevenness (read: needs very smooth floors).

The folks at MontaVista Software (what’s powering Wakamaru) say, "Its primary goal for the Japanese market is to provide companionship … be with (patients) like a health-care provider."

Also of note is the website of Toshiyuki Kita, the designer of the robot.

Oh, and it’s Linux powered, so I fully expect to see a wave of hacks coming from across the pond.

Google News provides an excellent roundup of articles about Wakamaru.

I was checking out Servo Magazine’s website the other day when low-and-behold I came across their web forums. I was very surprised to see that it’s actually pretty active. This surprises me because in the 6 years that I’ve been running this website, I’ve never seen a successful web forum relating to robotics. The community seems much more focused on local clubs and various e-mail lists.

Is this a sign that the community is becoming more "global" and less region specific?

 Ok, I’ll retract some of my words. The Parallax forums are also very active.

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Here’s your chance to win $5,000! The Lantronix wireless design contest, sponsored by, you guessed it, Lantronix, the makers of our favorite really small webserver. The goal is to "Wirelessly network-enable your machine or device with a Lantronix WiPort™ … and you could win $5,000."

They’re also giving the first 50 registered contestants 50% of their WiPort dev kit. Contestants are also entered into a monthly drawing - this month the prize is a PSP.

The WiPort offers serial to 802.11b, TCP/IP stack, web interface, 11 GPIO pins, dual serial ports, and 128bit WEP. The development kit goes for $299 on Mouser. The WiPort by itself retails at $119 for single quantities. The XPort (the wired version) goes for $49.

Not bad at all. So, get out there and web-enable your robot. Maybe you’ll win $5,000. Just be sure to let us know about it when it happens!


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Here’s a quick roundup on robot related stuff in the social bookmarking scene (aka, Digg and Delicious).

• Robot spy plane – Shape-shifting like Odo! Well, not quite. "Small robotic spy-planes have been developed that use shape-shifting wings to switch from being stable gliders to ultra-manoeuvrable fliers."
  "… during flight tests they have been capable of performing three continuous 360° rolls in 1 second."
  
  Apparently, all it can do now is navigate waypoints. The folks working on it hope to have it autonomously using the enhanced agility sometime in the near future. There’s also video of the plane flying.
  
  
  
• "World’s Smallest" RC airplane. Very small. Seriously. Doesn’t appear to be very hackable though. Just way too small.
  
  
• Fire breathing "robot" - looks more like a really dangerous statue than anything else. It’s probably on its way to Tokyo by now to cause death and destruction.
  
  
• Robot "attacks" Japan prime minister – Seriously folks, have you actually looked at the video?? It looks completely contrived. It turns around and sprays some smoke towards the guy – but everyone is laughing. Totally planned. On a side note, it looks like this robot  has a paintball weapon of some sort.
  
  
• And finally, the crazy Army guy that’s building a full sized Mech. ‘“Growing up, it’s every kid’s dream to have a giant — I hate to say robot, because it’s not, it’s a mech — every kid’s dream,” says Owens Jr.’
  
  Carlos’ website has more information, including videos. It’s also been picked up on several other sites.
  
  

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*bump*

Ok, for those of you that visit Slashdot regularly, you probably know you can add certain "Slashboxes" to your main page. The current Slashbox list is pretty comprehensive, HOWEVER, GoRobotics.net isn’t on there, and that needs to change!

Right under the list it says, "If you … have a reasonable suggestion for new RSS feeds, please contact CowboyNeal." So, I’m suggesting you all do just that. Please e-mail CowboyNeal and say, "Hey CowboyNeal, how about adding GoRobotics.net to your list of Slashboxes! The URL for the RSS feed is http://www.gorobotics.net/index2.php?option=com_rss&feed=RSS2.0&no_html=1"

Let’s see what happens. Thanks.


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Via, Akihabara News. See what 300 Euros will buy you in Japan? Judging from another picture on Akihabara, it seems you get about 9 servos, lots of wood, 3 battery packs, and some sort of proprietary controller board. The results? … I have no idea, because the company website is in Japanese. Looking at the PDF flier, it seems it "Greeting Stand Up" and "Walk Box Dance". Yay!

Oh, and it also looks like it’s radio controlled. Scratch that. Nothing new here, move along.


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It seems that Robo-Nexus has been ramping up it’s PR campaign as of late, targeting the major robotics clubs. Their robotics event, scheduled for the San Jose Convention Center, October 7-9, is being promoted to clubs, individual hobbiests, and companies.

The "User Group Outreach Program" offers robotics clubs, "Draped table and chairs", "Two free 4 Day Super Conference", "Five free expo passes for booth staff and guests", along with a listing of the club as an "Association Co-Sponsor." The cost? Simply list Robo-Nexus on the club’s page and tell all the club members about the event.

Pretty savvy, I’d say.

Tip: You can save $100 of your conference pass with the code "RNCD100" and $5 an expo-pass with code "RNEXD5".

 

The expo, targeted to the average consumer, is a show case of robots, competitions, and vender products.

The conference has an impressive line up of speakers and presentations.


I must say I’m pretty tempted to go, but getting myself from NC to CA on a student budget aint easy. Hat’s off to Dan Kara and crew for creating this.


Is anyone interested in blogging/podcasting from the conference for me?

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I found this off of Digg. It’s a pretty impressive short film showing the Honda ASIMO racing an old man on an airport people mover. Especially note how "easy" it is for ASIMO to transistion from running to walking and vice versa. They’ve got a 30 second and a 60 second version. You’ll need the latest version of FlashPlayer to view the video though.

Robots, racing old men today, trampling young men tomorrow. That means world domination next week.



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Dan Gates, with Southern Oregon Robotics, is selling their extended Mini Sumo chassis kit for $30. This about 33% off the regular price of $45. The kit includes hardware, wheels (from Tigerbotics), and two servos. Keep in mind the servos aren’t modified, but are easily hacked. The platform is ripe for expansion. Buy one and tell ‘em GoRobotics.net sent you.

Note: The sale has now ended.




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Well, it’s no secret that posting around here has been pretty slow lately. I do have excuses though – first the trip to San Diego, then much sleep afterwards, then a trip to the beach before school started, then school started on Wednesday, then catchup. So, here we are, back ready for more robot lovin’.

Today’s cool link would be the "build your own hot air flow soldering iron" howto article I saw. Having used a nice reflow station it’s pretty tough going back to my lousy iron in the shop. A system like this is perfect for desoldering chips from existing circuit boards, or cleaning up SMT boards after you’ve used a standard iron on them. Just run a bit of flux over the pads and blow some hot air on them – they’ll look just like a machine did them.

The guy in this article used copper tubing and some welding wire to create his heating element, and some silicone tubing as insulation and to bring in the air from a cheap air pump. Pretty nifty. Build one and let me know how it goes!


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Ah, back home to North Carolina where the tea is sweet (very sweet) and the humidity makes it feel 15 degrees hotter.

 As promised, I’m here to provide closure to NCSU’s journey to San Diego. And, no, we didn’t place in the competition. We were so very close – one of the top contenders actually. We were able to demonstrate in practice all of the tasks, which, as far as I know, no other teams were able to do.

 So let me just give you blow by blow starting Saturday morning:

 

First Preliminary Run

Our robot has a network cable teather which allows us to recompile code and run it on-the-fly. We consulted with David Novak, the in-charge-man for the competition rules, and he assured us we could run with the teather as long as we stepped away from the computer once we started our run.

However, when we arrived at the platform, the chief judge told us "nothin’ doin’" and made us remove the cable and put in a blank puck (aluminum endcap where the cable origianlly entered the electronics tube).

This was a high stress situation and everyone stood up to it bravely, but unfortunately, the robot failed to run.

A heated altercation then followed. We tried, as courteously as possible, to get some sort of concession since we had been misinformed. Eventually they agreed to let us run again that evening at 6:00.
 
Much stress ensued …

Second (1.1?) Preliminary Run

At least we had another chance on Saturday. We buttoned up the robot. Brought it to the launch platform, lowered it into the water, and nothing happened. OpenCV kept crashing, so our visual starting device (an orange "key") wouldn’t work.

In a mad, heart-stopping, dash, Matt opened up the robot and reconnected the network cable for Sterling to put in a delayed start mechanism. In a flash, the robot was back together and in the water.

We bagan to count the seconds … slowly, slowly, our 5 minute timer ticked down and we waited for the robot to start.

Nothing happened. 

Heat-broken, we pulled the robot out once again, and prepared for a very long night.

 
Final Preliminary Run

We had stayed up all night working on the robot. Trouble shooting bugs and trying to install a wireless network card so we could wireless start Seawolf.

Finally, the 11th hour dawned and to our horror, we found out our thrusters wouldn’t work. Nothing. Zip. Matt rushed back to the hotel to get the spares. The spares didn’t help. Some thrusters would cut on. We’d power cycle and a different thruster would cut on. It was a nightmare. No rhyme. No reason. Utter confusion.

Eventually, we found a combination that worked. It was very touchy, but it worked. We tried it 4 times at our booth. Twice at the starting platform. And finally, once on the dock.

However, when we lowered the robot into the water. It once again refused to work. Seawolf got stage fright.

To add to our misery, at this same time our batteries failed. So, we hauled Seawolf out of the water and did a NASCAR breakdown and battery replacement of the robot. There were cameras and people all around us taking pictures in amazement. It was pretty spectacular. The whole process took about 3 minutes.

With just a few minutes to spare we once again tried to coax Seawolf into playing, but he refused, and simply cut on two thrusters

and

spiraled

down

into

the

depths …

Conclusion


It was all worth it. Sure, we’re horribly disappointed, but it was an amazing experience. Everyone loved the robot – the media (on live San Diego TV), visitors ("I saw your robot on TV!"), and the divers ("f***-it, I like Seawolf better!").



Great job University of Florida you had an awesome robot and deserved the title. But, enjoy it while it lasts, cause next year

NCSU will be king!

The wireless at the hotel went down so I haven’t been able to post much. I’ll post more when I return home, but for now here’s the results:

1st place – University of Florida – $5,500
2nd place – ETS – $4,500
3rd place – MIT – $?
4th place – Duke – $?

"Docking Station Dollars" – Duke – $2,000
"No Guts, No Glory" – ETS  – $?
"Best New Vehicle" – Georgia Tech – $?

The results were actually a bit disappointing. I’ll explain more later. We are very happy about University of Florida’s win, though. They’re a great team and look forward to seeing them next year.

As for Seawolf … well … that will require explaination later.



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Well, it’s 10:21 AM. Our first preliminary run starts at 11:00 AM. As of now, two teams have made it through the gate, and two teams haven’t showed up. One team, I think the University of Florida, navigated to the acoustic pinger and surfaced.

We also have another run tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM.

The results of these runs will determine whether we make it into the finals. We can navigate through the gate just fine. We spent all night hashing out the acoustic navigation software and we’re very confident that we can find the pinger and hopefully surface. If the robot doesn’t surface we set a timeout, because we know it finds the pinger but it has trouble surfacing.

After the pinger we’re going for the pipeline then the docking station. We chose to do the docking station last because 1) it has the least amount of points associated with it and 2) there’s a chance we’ll start following the sun and run in to the wall – which would be a disqualification.


Mike, Erin, and Jim


Transdec

Here’s just a little recap from day 4.

The morning was spent getting some good data. We got out of the water around 9:30 or 10:00. Static judging started around 11:40 AM. We didn’t get back in the water between because there wasn’t enough time.

Static judging went well … we thought. Clean polished presentation. Covered everything we wanted. But, there was one judge that took great delight in grilling us over the "mechanical" aspects of the robot and how much student involvement there was. We’re all electrical engineers, so obviously our strengths aren’t in mechanical design. That’s why we’re so fortunate to have Vortex and the folks there that are some amazing machinists.

After judging Sterling continued to work on software and Matt, Jim, and I went to the BasicMicro "headquarters" to pick up some extra BasicAtoms. We had killed one the previous day and only had one extra.

BasicMicro was basically a loading bay. Pretty interesting place. We talked for a while to Nathan, the brains behind the operation, and he ended up donating two Atoms to the team. Thanks Nathan!

We came back to Transdec around 2:30 PM and were able to finally swim around 3:30 PM. On our first run the robot made it through the gate and found the docking station and "docked." Unfortunately, the sunlight was at such an angle as to confuse the vision software.

All the practice slots were filled for the rest of the day so we packed up and waited for the static judging results.

Pretty disappointing. We got 14th out of 19th. Everyone was pretty upset about that. Cornell got 1st place. MIT and Duke were also in the top 5.

Frankie and Sterling went to sleep and the rest of us went out for dinner. We came back around 11 PM and Jim, Frankie, and Sterling started working in the hotel pool. Jim woke me up around 6 AM and I let him sleep. We packed up the robot around 8:30 AM and came back to Transdec.

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It’s almost 9PST and I’m standing here blogging pool (amazingly large dive tank?)-side. Our arrival time was pushed up one hour this morning to get teams here in time for some live coverage from a local San Diego TV station.
…
Yeh, definitely got up at 5 AM.

Mike and I walked into the command/al queda room to find no robot. Mike said, "surely it isn’t in the pool now … " Sure enough, Frankie/Jim/Sterling were at the pool, and had been all night testing.

We buttoned up the robot and got onsite around 6 AM. The TV guy wanted to show our robot on TV so we hoisted it up in the air and were on live TV. We’re trying to get a copy of the tape. Your’s truely was the PR guy and did an awesome job pimping the robot to an uneducated CA audience.

HOWEVER, After about 2 hrs, this guy is getting aggravating. He keeps wanting to show the robot during commercial breaks and it’s interrupting our testing.

We’ve got a TON of work to do and need as much uninterrupted time as possible.

Oh, and as of 9AM  MIT and Cornell haven’t showed up today. They’ve won first places in previous years, so if they’re having trouble this could be a big break for the rest of us.