15 August 2012
Toothless
Working with Alex May (pictured) on a prototype robot for the future Biting Machine. This little one is called Toothless - it has no teeth yet. We use it for experimentation on Kinect-based perception, running experiments with balloon tracking and human detection.
After 4 days of solid work we had some success, and we can see the windy road ahead.
The Toothless prototyping platform is fitted with an Intel Atom 1.6ghz Zotac Mini ITX board, 2gb ram, 120gb solid state HDD. The monitor is only used while programming.
The Kinect goes straight in a USB port while a serially controlled Arduino Mega interfaces with the robots sensors and actuators (2x12V motors, 2xServo motors, laser pointer, compass, ultrasound sensor).
A 7Ah 12V lead acid battery provides approximately one hour of operation. The Atom gets pretty hot at times.
Young visitor in the Summer Gardens, Sheffield, attempting communication with a micro-thingy robot as part of the Lovebytes Festival.
The interface is a standard Neurosky Mindset with a Processing interface, talking to the robot with an xbee module.
I must say the Neurosky is a very unreliable device, we are waiting for the next generation for reliable results, or bioports.
test
