Archives for December 2008

Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class

Also Known as Wall-e from the Pixar animation movie.

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Well this was an interesting project that djsures did on instructables. The project can be found here.  He took a Wall-e that he purchased at toys'r'us and put together an autonomous Wall-e. Here is a link showing Wall-e work. He added personality to a toy that was otherwise lifeless. The project provides enough information to build the Wall-e, the only information not given is the code to program Wall-e. Overall it is a nice project and with a little imagination maybe you can turn some of those toy robots lying around into real movable robots.

HEXmas Tree

This has got to be the perfect Christmas tree for the robotics enthusiast.  Take a look at the link below to see the photograph of this holiday "treebot".  Happy Holidays from all of us at RobotNext. 

"The HEXmas tree, as it's been dubbed, is decked out in our favorite little robotic creature and stocked with some awesome VEX Robotics presents."

A HEXBUG Christmas Tree
Wired News – 1 hour ago
By Anton Olsen December 20, 2008 | 11:00:00 AMCategories: Robots In the spirit of the robot holidays, the HEXBUG folks have put together an awesome

A HEXBUG Christmas Tree – Wired News
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:19:52 GMT

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Get A Kitchen Robot To Load The Dishwasher

First there were robots to vacuum your floors, then robots to wash your floors, and now there is a robot to help out with the dishes.  This is interesting since what this robot does is to load the dishwasher, and what is a dishwasher other than a robot.  A robot to operate another robot.  See the article at the links below. 


Oneindia

Get A Kitchen Robot To Load The Dishwasher
Oneindia, India – 16 hours ago
You no longer need to perform the less desirable chores in the kitchen because now a robot is going to give you a helping robotic hand.
Now Let Robots Wash Your Dishes Techtree.com
all 9 news articles

Get A Kitchen Robot To Load The Dishwasher – Oneindia
Tue, 23 Dec 2008 07:39:13 GMT

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FIRST DAY- FRC New Control System vs FRC Old Control System

For the next few weeks I'm going to be doing a comparison of two robotic control systems used for robotic competitions in US FIRST(For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). The first control system I would like to introduce you to is the old FRC (FIRST Robotics Competition) control system.

You could find this control system through the link below:

The Old Robotic System

The next one I would like to show you is the new FRC control system which is called the C Rio(Compact Rio). This is going to be the future of the US FIRST Robotics.

Here is the layout for the C Rio:

The New Robotic System

Next week I will start to compare the two system and at the end I will let you decide which you prefer.

Editors: Jakenan, Mike Henry

The Hexbug Change

Hexbug So I found this little project on Hack a Day , which is very interesting. Applied Inspirations put together a nice hack on the robot hexbug.

"The Hexbug is a very cleverly designed, tiny toy robot bug. Once removed from its package and switched on, it marches forward until its antennae bump an obstacle. It then does a reverse-right turn, and continues forward again until the next obstacle."

Well, they decided to take the bug apart and see how it worked. Then they added a different board and microcontroller to do more with it such as adding, ’’Motor Off , Piezo-buzzer, Blinkable ‘Eye’, Low battery detection, Light level detection."  Perhaps later other sensors can be added.The webpage is set up very nicely and gives good instructions of the hexbug and how to change it up.

You can turn your $10.00 "insect" hexbug into a $35.00 "smart robot" hexbug!