Robot World

Hi folks. Well, here we are, the summer is definitely over and we seem to have skipped Autumn and gone straight into Winter! Or am I just feeling the cold more with each passing year? Lol. The holidays have been and gone, although I have a couple of trips left to look forward to. I’ve also had some paid work which helps to fund this Research & Development that I’m doing, until I get to the point where I can earn some money from what I’m doing! So, now that I’m back on the fun stuff, I’ve turned my attention to the next of the major physical sub-systems on my list – Arms. Now arms are quite complicated things mechanically, so rather than trying to build my own from scratch, I had a look around to see what I could pick up. There is quite an array of robot arms out there on the market, as a quick search on Google revealed, so the first task was to reduce the number of candidates by applying some criteria. I listed my basic requirements by jotting down what I wanted the a...

Well, it's been a busy few weeks with family birthdays, a trip to Portugal and a very interesting day at the culmination of UK Robotics Week. This was a day of talks and an exhibition hosted by the IET at their headquarters in London, and supported by the UK-RAS, EPSRC, the Royal Acedemy of Engineering and the ImechE, so a prestigious event. Of particular interest to me were the talks on Robots in Extreme Environments, and Robots in social Care, both of which I have an interest in, and form the basis of what I'm doing here on the blog. There's also an exhibition on Robotics at the Science Museum in London, although I don't think I'll have time to get to see that :-( . Still, can't do everything! So, what have I been up to in the lab? I hear you ask. Well, I'll tell you. I wanted to continue making progress on the basic head I showed last time, and top of my list was to do some camera work – at least some basics which can be built on later. First up wa...

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, so it's time for an update on what I've been up to. Things have been pretty hectic here at Phoenix Labs. I'm attending a business development programme a couple of days a week, and we've also had the Whit Bank Holiday, when I spent time with my family, so my actual working time has been reduced. Never the less, progress has been made! Firstly, the LIDAR Laser Scanner unit I ordered from the USA has arrived, along with the controller board, see the photo below. I haven't tried it out yet as it will take me a while to figure out how to interface to it in both hardware and software, and I didn't want to break off from the project I started while I was waiting for it. Also, I ordered a bunch of components, including various connectors, so that I can build a stripboard version of the mobile platform controller, and I want to build this before I go further with it. This is partly because it will look better ...

Hi again, and welcome back to my blog. Following on from my initial post last week, I thought I'd show the prototyping I've done with the mobile platform so far. I started out by dismantling a radio control model I bought on e-bay as a non working spares-or-repair item. I bought this as I was only interested in stripping it down to the bare bones for a chassis for my mobile robot. I went with this approach as it got me the chassis, with built in battery compartment and loudspeaker, complete with the wheels and gearboxes for around £5.00, plus a couple of pounds P&P. An absolute bargain! The one I chose has quite a large base, ideal for mounting my electronics, and the upper housing is also quite roomy inside, so that when I'm happy with the electronics it can be refitted to give some protection. The photo's below show this stage of the conversion. The radio control board removed from model The chassis after removal of the RC board The upper hou...

Hi, and welcome to my Blog. This blog is to share my adventures in creating Robots and AI solutions to everyday, real-world problems. In that respect it's intended as more of a diary of what I'm been up to, and what progress I've made in my adventure, although I will also be posting some thoughts and ideas to see what feedback I get. At the moment, I'm just at the start of the adventure, having recently completed an MSc in AI & Robotics, and now I'm putting the theory into practice. I'm using Arduino type controllers to interface with the actuators and sensors, and plan on having Raspberry Pis to perform the more complex, processor intensive functions, such as Mapping & Localisation, as well as Video Image processing. Over the next few months I'll post progress on where I'm up to, with some pictures and video of things in action. Currently I'm developing a small mobile platform which I can use to experiment with. I'll be using ultra...