NASA's Cool Robot of the Week

S.Bartfarst writes "NASA's Cool Robot of the Week (which apparently is about a month long) has produced a huge spike of activity on our web page from .gov and .mil domains. Most interesting are a long series of hits from uspto.gov. Maybe looking for "prior art?" I wonder how much of this Dean Kamen already has tied up?"

Slashdotted

You slashdotted NASA!

Might just be

.. other .mil geeks browsing at work. :P I know if I'm on a duty day (when I can't go home) I tend to surf during downtime. :P

Month long week just shortened

The file telerobotics_page:coolrobots.html you requested was not found. Back to 198.116.66.245.

Way to go.
Get them back on track at NASA

Is it really a patent issue if only a one-off?

Regarding the patent office and whether Kamen already owns the patents needed, it seems moot for now. The guy, carefully, I think, says nothing at all about marketing or manufacturing his robot in numbers. In fact, unless I missed it, he doesnâ(TM)t even speculate on practical uses for his deviceâ"it appears to merely a hobby of sorts.

IANAL, but I donâ(TM)t think one has anything to worry about if one isnâ(TM)t trying to encroach on another guyâ(TM)s market. On the other hand, what if he essentially provided a DIY guide for people to avoid paying top dollar for a Segway? Are there trade secrets involved?

On another note, his page certainly provides a lot of photos and videos. The guy is definitely not stingy with the bandwidth, but that may change after today.

yo

this guy did it 2nd [freelug.org]

yay for legway.

Balancing Pool Cues

I wonder how much of this Dean Kamen already has tied up?

Not much since control systems have been balancing pool cue's [geocities.com] since the early days of rocketry.

Patent Infringement...

nBot, David Anderson's two-wheel balancing robot goes the Segway one better by getting rid of the pesky human!

Well that didn't take very long to find :). Maybe I should one-up nBot by getting rid of the balancing mechanism and adding 2 more wheels :-).

Lego Mindstorms

I attempted to build a two-wheel self balancing robot similar to this one [smu.edu] using the lego mindstorms kit. I had a large metal ball that would roll in a cylinder and hit sensors at either end allowing the robot to adjust when it was tilting. Unfortunately the motors could never respond quick enough to prevent the machine from falling over.

I have given several of these kits as gifts, great gift for teenagers and unemployed tech workers.

Re:Why stop at patenting cookies?

The thing that bugs me about the mindstorms kit, and LEGO(TM)(R) in general is the non-orthogonality of the bricks/components. If you want to put two bricks together at an angle, you need specially shaped bricks. In fact, the lego people make a butt load of cash just inventing new kinds of bricks to include in kits -- lose 'em, and you have to buy a new kit, or another kit that includes it.

I much preferred Construx building sets as a kid. It was much easier to put together moving parts, build voluminous structures, and to some degree work with angles. Anyone remember Construx? I suppose k'nex now fulfills this role, though it seems less sturdy. Of course, Meccano is the granddady of all, so some-one will point out that it's superior. It's just that I've never owned any ;-)

BTW, ever notices how the electrical engines in the Mindstorms set are non-lego-standard shapes and sizes? What's that about? Would an extra millimeter of plastic to make it align hurt that much??

I'm sure there are better products to construct robots, meccano offshoots or succesors combined with sensors, actuators, a PC interface and perhaps even a microcontroller-cum-batterypack like the mindstorms set. Does the slashdot crowd have any suggestions?

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, mindstorms is fscking expensive and hard to get, esp. in Europe.

screw that

what the hell are these [nasa.gov] black spots? black holes? those things are f'n MASSIVE. wow. back to your regularly scheduled slashdot...

.gov, .mil, err

has produced a huge spike of activity on our web page from .gov and .mil domains

my guess is you're about to get a *lot* more from a .org in $REFERER

Referencing

"NASA's Cool Robot of the Week (which apparently is about a month long) [...]".

I guess since we're taking about a robot and NASA is involved thats a light-month?

Site's back up!

But the links on the site are being slashdotted!

aargh!

Software?

I didn't see any explanation on his page about how his software works. Did anyone else find info on his software to run nBot?

what i wanna know is....

why return if you loop forever? int balance() { while(1) { /* loop forever */ angle = read_analog(TILT_SENSOR); angle_velocity = angle - last_angle; last_angle = angle; wheel = read_wheel_encoder(); velocity = wheel - last_wheel; last_wheel = wheel; torque = (angle * K1) + (angle_velocity * K2) + (wheel * K3) + (wheel_velocity * K4); pwm(torque); msleep(40); /* sleep 40 milliseconds */ } }

balancing wheel chair

Ive seen a TV clip of a wheel chair
performing the same trick.

The demo showed a large adult sitting
in the chair which was balancing on
two wheels. The guy was thrown a weight
that made the chair wobble but it easily
recovered. This was all on a hard smooth
studio floor but still pretty impressive.

They didnt say if this was anywhere near
production.

Those wacky NASA guys

NASA's Cool Robot of the Week (which apparently is about a month long)

Yeah, those NASA guys are always getting confused with all those different planets having days that are like a year long and whatnot.

-

Needs to have a companion page...

'Cool Robot That's Still Working Next Week'

Might end up being a short list, though. :-)

but when do I get a household droid?

I've been following the advances in robotics with great interest. They've come a long way, to be sure. But still, there are no consumer level droids available. I have a lot of things around the house that could be done better and faster (and certainly easier) by a robot. But I can't get one.

Will someone please get to work on a small battery with incredible storage capacity and quick charging? Or make a fuel cell powered 'bot that can walk over to the gas tank and refuel himself. Whatever it takes, just make a droid that has a price similar to a car, and I'll buy it.

It should be able to perform normal household duties. I'm talking about cleaning, cooking, answering the phone and watching over the place while I'm gone. I don't think that's too much to ask, but maybe I'm wrong.

Torrent link

Here's a BitTorrent link to a tarball of the nBot movies:

http://www.mskf.org/nbot-movies.torrent [mskf.org]

I'm running it on my own tracker, so my apologies in advance if it blows up or doesn't work.

This is a new low in slashdot history

Corgratulations. I didn't think it could be done, but we made a story out of referrer logs.

Re:Oh for Christ's Sakes...

Dynamic ballance remains a cool thing to watch, I guess. It's much too nerdish to ignore :)

Re:well..

Wow. These guys sound unhappy.

Re:Translation please? Babelfish?

okay, did some quick babelfish translations:

"Coolly robot of the NASAS of the week (those approximately a month long is apparent), produced a very large point of the activity on our 4web PAGE out gov and mil areas"

Not much better, but I'm digging that word coolly. ;)

For the squeamish: How to read that interview

1: Download Mozilla Firebird
2: Install "Nuke Images" plugin
3: Click link (from home only with no kids around)
4: Quickly right-click and choose "Remove this image" on each pic. (try not to look directly at it)
5: Read article and think "how the hell can that guy do that?"
6: ???
7: Profit!

(Sorry 'bout those last two)

Re:More about those robots...

lol, i would soooo mod you up if i could. Those i'm not sure whether you are more insightful or funny.