Robotics : state of the art technologies and hobby

[William Gaatjes]

For those interested, a pcb design calculator , also useful for to be able to visualize transmissionline behavior and to keep in mind other pcb design aspects :

Saturn PCB Toolkit - Saturn PCB

saturnpcb.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

Another handy dandy dude making the greatest robotics : Aaed Musa.

Aaed Musa

For as long as I can remember I've been obsessed with building robots and gadgets. Now I want to share that passion with the world.

www.youtube.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

Variations for drone propulsion...

ETH Zürich :

 

[William Gaatjes]

AI trained humanoid soccer robots :

 

[William Gaatjes]

When you need to debug your microcontroller projects to control robots or other digital circuits like for example an fpga based pcb , a logic analyzer is a necessity.
Saleae logic has very nice logic analyzers. The software as a standard supports analyzer that are in fact automatic protocol interpreters, like for example SPI, I2C, UART, CAN, DMX-512, i2S, PCM, 1-wire USB LS and USB FS... And many more.

As another example :
You can also use the analyzer with timing measurements to debug ultrasonic measurement devices or as first step to test out new sensors like for example the very common and known HC-SR04 with trigger and eco pin.
Another example is to measure servo pulsewidths for calibration purposes, like creating a lookup table , either by hand or self made calibration software to be used in the final software project.
Remember, no servo of the cheaper kind responds exactly the same to a given servo pulse with a fixed pulse width.
Make measurements, write them down in an openoffice (or libreoffice) calcsheet or Microsoft excel sheet and make a table to draw a graph to determine the linearity and as end result fine tune calculation algorithms.
See if it is possible and useful when taking measurements or ADC samples to do a lot of averaging, think Gaussian distribution, normal distribution.

Everybody wants a straight line, a straight connection and easy to understand connection between input value and output value.
Unfortunately, reality has weird stuff like Euler's number (After Leonard Euler, 1707 -1783) and other weird logarithms that make mathematicians cry and curse their profession : "Why God, Why must thou punish me ? Am i a not a good God loving person ? ".

Saleae

Saleae products are used by electrical engineers, firmware developers, enthusiasts, and students to record, measure, visualize, decode, and debug signals in their circuits and electronics.

www.saleae.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

Tiny robot, with a many stator motor.
It kind of reminds of the molecular motor once long ago fully described by several Japanese researchers , where i forgot the names and the websites are dead or unreachable. I added some other websites :

For more background information about molecular rotary engines :

Frontiers | A new class of biological ion-driven rotary molecular motors with 5:2 symmetry

Several new structures of three types of protein complexes, obtained by cryo-electron microscopy and published between 2019 and 2021, identify a new family o...

www.frontiersin.org

Applying torque to the Escherichia coli flagellar motor using magnetic tweezers - Scientific Reports

The bacterial flagellar motor of Escherichia coli is a nanoscale rotary engine essential for bacterial propulsion. Studies on the power output of single motors rely on the measurement of motor torque and rotation under external load. Here, we investigate the use of magnetic tweezers, which in...

www.nature.com

Ion-Powered Rotary Motors: Where Did They Come from and Where They Are Going?

Molecular motors are found in many living organisms. One such molecular machine, the ion-powered rotary motor (IRM), requires the movement of ions across a membrane against a concentration gradient to drive rotational movement. The bacterial flagellar motor (BFM) is an example of an IRM which...

www.mdpi.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

When you are able to program, like for example in C :
This can be a good reminder , if not, it is a good read :

How to use structs and enumeration to create Look Up Tables.

https://www.embedded.com/use-luts-to-ease-your-development-burden/

 

[William Gaatjes]

This can perhaps be very handy at very low rpm but with a lot of torque. At low revolutions, the vibration is also of course less.

Retsetman : Nutating gears

 

[XcPNehVYlE4A3C]

Great thread! I'm new here, enjoying reading through it.

I've done some simple Arduino programming with motors and servos but i'd really like to try out a DIY fpv kit to play around with, if a cheap one exists out there.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Great thread! I'm new here, enjoying reading through it.

I've done some simple Arduino programming with motors and servos but i'd really like to try out a DIY fpv kit to play around with, if a cheap one exists out there.

If you want to go for the basics first and use your arduino derivate.
A good learning method is to use only one motor and an accelerometer chip. Mount both on the end of a thin light wooden rail.
The other end of the thin wooded rail is mounted with a pivoting hinge to the desk. This way, the movement is limited to only vertical in a circular motion.

Be sure to add some cage around the rotor from the brushless dc motor !
For protection when the cat or kids walk into the room. That the rotor from the brushless dc motor cannnot be touched easily.

Then you experiment with keeping the wooden rail horizontal by using PID algorithms, by regulating the rotation speed of the brushless dc motor based on the accelerometer input. Yaw, roll and pitch it is called : Constantly balancing the wooden rail.

When you have accomplished this, the fun part is to add some weight to the wooden rail and let the software keep the wooden rail balanced.
You will hear that the motorcurrent is being adjusted on the fly by the PID algorithms because you can hear the rotationspeed change.

If you have mastered this, the next step is to start working with the drone with 4 motors.
In the same way. Connected to a pivoting hinge for the first tests.

I did not do this myself but a lot of self thaught drone programmers started this way.

 

[XcPNehVYlE4A3C]

Awesome - thanks for the write-up!

I'm going to dig around to see what i have, I have some motors but not sure if they are light-weight enough. This sounds doable though, I've programmed PID type stuff for physics sims before.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Awesome - thanks for the write-up!

I'm going to dig around to see what i have, I have some motors but not sure if they are light-weight enough. This sounds doable though, I've programmed PID type stuff for physics sims before.

Good luck !
I am interested to see the result. Some images or a youtube video ?

 

[William Gaatjes]

All kinds of software can be found in this thread , so i add this option for CAD (Computer Aided Design) as well.
Drawing your 3D models online and adding circuits : Autodesk TinkerCAD.

Tinkercad

Tinkercad is a free, easy-to-use app for 3D design, electronics, and coding.

www.tinkercad.com

3D Design - Tinkercad

3D design is the first step in bringing your ideas to life. Start your journey to change how the world is designed and made today.

www.tinkercad.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

When you want to know more about electronics.

theoryCIRCUIT - Do It Yourself Electronics Projects

Find every electronics circuit diagram here, Categorized Electronic Circuits and Electronic Projects with well explained operation and how to make it procedure and then New Circuits every day, Enjoy and Discover electronics.

theorycircuit.com

The wireless section :

Wireless Archives - theoryCIRCUIT - Do It Yourself Electronics Projects

theorycircuit.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

Jeremy Fielding : Robotics :

Jeremy Fielding

My goal is simple. Draw people to engineering with interesting projects; Inspire them with ideas; Then teach them how to do it. I am fascinated with all things mechanical, but most of my projects require multiple disciplines. So, you will also see electronics, motors, and fabrication...

www.youtube.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

Howto : use a ringbuffer with a uart.
Even a robotics fanatic wants to have lots of debug information available, especially in the alpha stage of development.
This is often done by writing debug messages by making use of the uart.
USB to uart cables are cheap and available everywhere.
Or uart to usb chips are integrated on the development boards.
Terminal programs like for example Tera Term or the embedded terminal program in the arduino IDE are great to display the debug messages.

But how to get those debug messages send or how to receive commands to control the robot ?
When programming, ringbuffers often will be needed. This full explanation with examples is in the programming language C.

Lesson 10: UART Receive Buffering

In the last lesson, we created a very simple UART driver which polls the peripheral for received data. As we learned with the push button back in lesson 6, this is not the optimal solution for most…

www.simplyembedded.org

 

[C1]

In today's MSN:

Unitree Robotics - $16K Personal Robot/Avatar

 

[William Gaatjes]

In today's MSN:

Unitree Robotics - $16K Personal Robot/Avatar

Amazing stuff. The technology is now going so incredibly fast. These fast advances are almost incomprehensible.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Sometimes you want to draw a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) and nowadays it is pretty standard that the pcb editor program can also work with added 3D models(*.step file) of the components.
The fun part is that the pcb editor also has a 3D viewer. And then you can see your own design in 3D.
Most people make the 3D step models themselves but there are also open free libraries available :

3Dcontentcentral
https://www.3dcontentcentral.com/

​

Ultralibrarian
https://www.ultralibrarian.com/

​

Grabcad
https://grabcad.com/

​

 

[William Gaatjes]

Robots often need an operating system to be able to function :

Quantum Leaps, LLC is all about embedded operating systems , very nice videos that help explain a lot of difficult subjects when it comes to programming :

Quantum Leaps, LLC

Modern embedded systems programming Here, you can find the "missing curriculum" of real-time embedded programming. This channel's unique presentation style explains the main concepts by showing how they work at a low level. If you would like to support this channel, you can do the following: -...

www.youtube.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

Adam savage meets Mark Setrakian, a great designer and engineer in animatronics.

 

[William Gaatjes]

The Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics has been improved :
Original website :

Boston Dynamics tilt Atlas naar hoger niveau met groot gedragmodel - Engineers Online

De humanoïde robot Atlas van Boston Dynamics heeft een flinke sprong vooruit gemaakt. Dankzij de toepassing van een zogenoemd Large Behavior Model (LBM) kan de robot meerdere complexe taken uitvoeren met behulp van één enkel AI-model. Dat is een doorbraak in robotica: in plaats van aparte...

www.engineersonline.nl

The website is translated to English, click for translated version :

Boston Dynamics tilt Atlas naar hoger niveau met groot gedragmodel - Engineers Online

De humanoïde robot Atlas van Boston Dynamics heeft een flinke sprong vooruit gemaakt. Dankzij de toepassing van een zogenoemd Large Behavior Model (LBM) kan de robot meerdere complexe taken uitvoeren met behulp van één enkel AI-model. Dat is een doorbraak in robotica: in plaats van aparte...

www-engineersonline-nl.translate.goog

Small excerpt from text :
"
Boston Dynamics' humanoid robot, Atlas, has taken a significant leap forward. Thanks to the application of a Large Behavior Model (LBM), the robot can perform multiple complex tasks using a single AI model.
This is a breakthrough in robotics: instead of separate algorithms for each task, Atlas now learns generic behaviors that allow it to walk, grasp, and manipulate—and even resolve unexpected situations.
"
and
"
One of the most striking findings is that Atlas spontaneously displayed behavior the researchers had never taught it.
For example, the robot picked up a dropped object from the floor, even though it wasn't part of the training data. This "emergent behavior" is an important step toward general-purpose robots that can flexibly handle the unpredictable real world.
"
and
"
Boston Dynamics sees the combination of powerful hardware design and Large Behavior Models as the path to a generally applicable humanoid robot.
Collaboration with organizations including the Toyota Research Institute accelerates the integration into industrial applications.
"

Extra video :

 

[William Gaatjes]

This video is 5 years old but spectacular to see. A bipedal robot doing balancing exercises and ballet dancing, by Dr Guero2001.

 

[William Gaatjes]

The unitree G1 undergoing a violent stress test, the robot tries to fight back :

I remember Boston Dynamics doing the same to their robots, sturdy as they can come.

And extra kungu demo :