If you ever wanted to win a bar bet about a world record, you probably know about the Guinness book for World Records. Did you know, though, that there are some robots in that book? Guinness pointed some out in a recent post. Ever wonder about the longest table-tennis rally with a robot or the […]
[Paul McCabe] wrote in to let us know about his $25 robot. This small wheeled robot is based on an ESP32 and made using cardboard and hot glue. You drive the contraption using a Bluetooth game controller thanks to the Bluepad32 library, which boasts a long list of supported hardware. [Paul] provides a Bill of Materials […]
We would have enjoyed [Harishankar’s] tear down of a robot vacuum cleaner, even if it didn’t have a savage twist at the end. Turns out, the company deliberately bricked his smart vacuum. Like many of us, [Harishankar] is suspicious of devices beaming data back to their makers. He noted a new vacuum cleaner was pinging […]
Testing the FOC-based motor controller. (Credit: Excessive Overkill, YouTube) Vector Control, also known as Field Oriented Control or FOC is an AC motor control scheme that enables fine-grained control over a connected motor, through the precise control of its phases. In a recent video [Excessive Overkill] goes through the basics and then the finer details […]
There’s no rule that says that logic circuits must always use electrically conductive materials, which is why you can use water, air or even purely mechanical means to implement logic circuits. When it comes to [soiboi soft]’s squishy robots, it thus makes sense to turn the typical semiconductor control circuitry into an air-powered version as […]
The Zynq-7000 usage at the core of the robot controller. (Credit: Excessive Overkill, YouTube) Industrial robots like robotic arms are basically everywhere, albeit usually out of the public’s eye in factories. This also means that they get replaced and scrapped all the time, making for many opportunities to snap up an industrial robot that once […]
Unitree have a number of robotic offerings, and are one of the first manufacturers offering humanoid robotic platforms. It seems they are also the subject of UniPwn, one of the first public exploits of a vulnerability across an entire robotic product line. In this case, the vulnerability allows an attacker not only to utterly compromise […]
Do you remember the movie WALL-E? Apparently, [Leviathan engineering] did, and he wasn’t as struck by the title character, or Eva, or even the Captain. He was captivated by BURN-E. His working model shows up in the video below. We’ll be honest. BURN-E didn’t ring a bell for us, though we remember the movie. He […]
Imagine trying to balance a heavy metal ball bearing on a cafeteria tray. It’s not the easiest thing in the world! In fact, it’s perhaps a task better automated, as [skulkami3000] demonstrates with this robotic build. The heart of the build is a flat platform fitted with a resistive touchscreen panel on top. The panel […]