Friday, July 31, 2009

Toyota's humanoid robot.

We are familiar with the Honda "ASIMO" robot, one of the most advanced robot nowadays. I have visited the Honda welcome plaza and see the real ASIMO running, it is awesome. If you missed my post on ASIMO, do check it out here.

Toyota is not lagging behind in the robotic research, the new robot prototype showing a impressive 2 leg balancing and also it can run @ 7km/hour which is a little bit faster than the Honda ASIMO. Please check out the video below.

The robotic research is a hot topic in Japan, even the hobby RC humanoid robot is also available to the public, e.g. Robo-one. May be after 10-20 years, a humanoid robot is ready to serve you, and it is a Japanese branded robot of course:)

Friday, July 24, 2009

AVR Touchscreen interfacing.


Sparkfun.com made an AVR based USB Touchscreen Mouse, basically you attach a resistive touch screen to AVR IO pins and get the x and y coordinates with some calculations, after that sent to your computer using serial or usb port. So you will have a touch screen mouse or drawing pad. They used a PSP touch screen which also ready @ sparkfun store, the tutorial is very detail and clear, codes are included too, thanks guy who sent in.

Check out the demo video:

USB AVR Touch Screen from Sparkfun on Vimeo.



Tutorial:
The AVR based USB Touchscreen Mouse

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

TryEngineering.org for both students & parents / IEEE


TryEngineering.org is an introductory website to engineering field by IEEE. If you are curious about what is engineering, how is engineering career, it is a good start. It also includes some educational resources for engineers.

By the way, IEEE is celebrating 125th anniversary! Check out the 125th anniversary website below.

Link
IEEE's 125th Anniversary
Try Engineering.org
IEEE

Monday, July 20, 2009

Gyroscopes VS Accelerometers.

Accelerometer is now very famous because it exits in most of the smartphones like iPhone, Android and Palm Pre. Recently, I got a RC mini-helicopter with built-in gyroscope to detect the rotational movement, it makes me interested in the differences between the two sensors. After some Googling, I found a good video tutorial that compare the two sensors. The InvenSense, whom made the Wii MotionPlus, using Gyroscopes and Accelerometers to capture precise human hand movement. The comparison video goes here:


My cheap RC mini-helicopter:

The single-axis gyroscope inside the helicopter:


It is used to detect if the helicopter rotates left or right unintentionally while the main blade is rotating. The MCU inside the helicopter would try to control another motor to rotate another blade to counter the rotation if necessary based on the gyroscope reading.

Here is my video showing the balancing control of the helicopter:


Furthermore, there are some articles worth to read:

Sunday, July 19, 2009

ARDUWAY - Segway-like lego bot with Arduino Brain.

ADRUWAY is a segway-like, self balancing two wheels bot, which used a gyroscope to detect the tilt angle motion. Let's check out the cool video here:

Link:
http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1221664564/0#0

Friday, July 17, 2009

Re-Design internet router.

Internet router is a device exists in most people's house nowadays. Goldsmiths' folks decided to re-design this home device into a beautiful and functional device that can place in your home nicely. Please check out the video:



The last design is called "Jelly Fish", it is quite pretty.


Link:
http://futurerouters.com/

Monday, July 6, 2009

Motors control with MCU.

Guys from Nerdkits.com, presents "Motors and Microcontrollers 101". The tutorial covers some basic idea of motors:


Check out the complete tutorial here:
http://www.nerdkits.com/videos/motors_and_microcontrollers_101/