Liftoff of a Delta II rocket and its NASA payload, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), has been delayed 24 hours. At the soonest, launch now will be Saturday, Dec. 12, during a launch window that extends from 6:09:33 to 6:23:51 a.m. PST (9:09:33 to 9:23:51 a.m. EST). The delay allows the launch team additional time to troubleshoot a technical issue. During final systems checks of the Delta II rocket Wednesday in preparation for flight, an anomaly in the motion of a booster steering engine was detected. Continue reading
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Model Railroad on the Internet
If you want to put your robot on the Web I recommend you take a look at some interactive devices on the Internet. A good first stop is the University of Ulm’s model railroad. When you visit their Web site, you are entered into a queue of people who may issue a command to one of two Schnell Zugs and / or leave a message to the other operators. Second, issue your command (by clicking on a train and a destination) and sit back to wait. Continue reading
RoboSim
Wanna fun robot simulator? I recommend you download a robot simulator from Luiz Felipe Rudge Encarnacao. It includes an untethered mobile gripper with 5 degrees of movement in a 3-D room of objects and a toy airplane flying around in the same room. This is a Windows program that runs well on a Pentium and doesn’t lose its usefulness on a double speed 486. Continue reading
Stable Hopping Leg
Robert Ringrose of MIT demo’ed a very cool design at AAAI97. His Hopper robot leg stands on its own, and, when activated, hops straight up and down, maintaining its balance. It corrects its balance if you shove it to one side. It can be adjusted to hop forward, backward left, right, etc., simply by changing its center of gravity. The hopper will move in the direction of its mass. Continue reading
Mutant Machines
Mutant Machines is a Television series shown on the Granada Men and Motors satellite channel. It is Scrapheap Challenge meets Combat Cars. Two teams of three people were given the task of creating a powerful, useful, motoring related machine from two or more donor machines. One challenge was to make a four wheel drive, four wheel steering car from two front wheel drive cars. Continue reading
The Micromouse Contest
The micromouse competition is to build a small mobile robot that can solve a standardised maze. The competition has been running for over 25 years and is popular in the UK, USA, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and elsewhere. This “maze solving” contest was designed to challenge graduate electronic engineers. Continue reading
Mobile Robot Links
Most of the links on this site are listed under their classified headings, for example, links to recommended magazines, CD-ROMs, Parts Suppliers can be found by clicking on the navigation page list on the left. This page just has unclassified and miscellaneous links. Continue reading
Current Research Projects
Guidance Matrix Based Navigation for an Autonomous Mobile Robot in Dynamic Unstructured Environments – Chelliah Kanesalingam (PhD)
Real-time Video Processing for Mobile Robot Navigation and Steering – Nic Snailum (PhD) An Integrated Mobile Internet, Television and Telephone System at 42GHz – Evangelos Pallis (PhD) Design and Construction of an Autonomous Mobile Robot – David Buckley (MSc by Project) Sonar Signal Processing for Mobile Robot Guidance – Wei Zhang (MSc by Project) Continue reading
Robotics Part Suppliers
Robot kits, Electronic and Mechanical Components, Tools.
We buy most of the components for our robots from the following suppliers and can recommend each one. Nearly all the components for Maisie, the javelin thrower, Victoria/Robocop, Elizabeth, Al-one, Cruella and Cycler were bought from these suppliers. Continue reading
ROBOT KITS
Some of the following kits and robots could be used as the basis for an entry in the schools or the maze solving micromouse competition or just for learning about mobile robots.The list is, I believe, a complete list of micromouse type robot kits and built robots that are available in the UK and on the web. The list gives the prices and specifications with the manufacturer’s and retailer’s details. Continue reading