GetRobo Blog English

Controlling a swarm of robots by drawing on your iPad

 Wouldn't it be cool if you drew something on your iPad and then a swarm of robots diligently copied that? Well here you go.

 Keisuke Uto built the hardware and software for an idea contest at his company in Japan. He says the most difficult part was to get the camera to recognize the bar codes on all the robots accurately. And to build everything within a tight budget.

Also he says that he didn't have the time to build an anticollision system, but actually it looks cuter when the robots bump into each other trying to get to the right configuration.

 Here's how he made the system (although it's in Japanese). (The instructions below are in English now!) Could be used as a great attraction at events. Thank you Uto-san!

How To Make Multi-Robots Formation Control System

View more presentations from Keisuke Uto

Beer Can Transformer Robot

 In the U.S., beer fetching robots are quite popular, but here we have a beer can that does not need to be fetched. It can walk over to you! Although, there's no liquid inside - at least not yet.

 It's made by Ron Tajima (@longjie0723) who professionaly is an expert on legged robots. You can see his earlier hobby work  here (Wiimba) and here (Pacmba).

 Also, it's fun to see how much his son has grown!

 Thanks Ron!

ROBO-ONE humanoid robots compete to become household helpers

 ROBO-ONE is holding it's second  Humanoid Helper Project this weekend. (For those that missed the first one in 2008, check out the articles here.)

 The finals are being held right this minute in Yokohama Japan, but GetRobo guest author IKETOMU has kindly sent us his report about yesterday's preliminary. 

 The purpose of the Humanoid Helper Project is to motivate individual robot builders to develop and show off their technologies that may eventually be used to commercialize household robots. Household robots meaning not the Roombas, but the Rosies.

 In this competition, robots are remotely controlled via WiFi by operators that are looking at the environment through a PC. This year, the preliminary consisted of the following 3 events.

 1) Pouring water from a plastic bottle into a cup

 2) Carrying a dish of ping-pong balls on a tray

 3) A 30 minutes endurance race

  Three robots entered the preliminary. Doka Harumi (Doka project), THKR-4 (CAP Project) and Musashi (MARU Family). All are HUGE. As of the end of yesterday, 1st place went to Musashi,  2nd place was THKR-4 and 3rd place was Doka Harumi.

 Enjoy the videos!

Pouring water with a bottle into a cup by Doka Harumi Pouring water with a bottle into a cup by THKR-4 Pouring water with a bottle into a cup by Musashi Carrying a dish of ping-pong ball on the tray by Doka Harumi Carrying a dish of ping-pong ball on the tray by THKR-4 Carrying a dish of ping-pong ball on the tray by Musashi Thirty minutes endurance race by Doka Harumi, ThKR-4 and Musashi

Awesome multi-legged robots

 We recently wrote about robot builders in Japan becoming more interested in multi-legged robots and here are some awesome photos and a video from the 47th Kanto (Tokyo region)-Gumi (group) Robot Training Meeting  which was held at robot shop Robotma.com  in Tokyo on Valentine's Day, 2010. The meeting was organized by Ishikawa-san , who is the leader of Kanto-Gumi. 

 
 You can read more about these robots at Sanzai’s Blog  and Biped Robot News Japan.

「多脚が征く!_#4 」

Dear Hershey, Wanna start a robot competition?

 

 If you do, here's something you can look into - a robot competition that involves lots of chocolate.

 The TIROL-CHOCO Robot Competition is an annual event where robot builders in Japan gather with their robots that look like a big piece of a TIROL chocolate, which by the way is very yummy.

 The robots compete in 3 events - foot race, knocking down paper cups and carrying chocolates.

 Below is a video of the foot race from the 4th TIROL-CHOCO Robot Competition that was held on Feb. 13.

 It's really a fun family event and the interesting fact is, the chocolate company didn't have to do anything to get this going. Robot builder MASAYUKI

 and others thought it was a fun idea, because one of their robots looked like a big piece of chocolate and yes the sweets happen to have this cute wrapping paper that come in wide variety so why not start a game? They send in a proposal to the chocolate company for approval and TIROL checks to make sure that the event will not damage their brand or anything.  Then TIROL just sends them a bunch of chocolate to be used in the games and as prizes. Robot shop RT Co. sponsors the competition. 

  The winning robot is decided by a combination of points they collect in the events and a popularity vote. What a great way to be able to market a product.

 
  If you're interested, you can read more on Biped Robot News Japan.