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Ideas: PoV Yoyo, Press-fit food || Classes, Spring 2011

September 21, 2011 nouyang 1 Comment

Mmmmm…. classes.
Started out with:
2.008 (Make a yoyo)
6.131 (Power electronics)
6.042 (Math for CS majors)
6.003 (Signals and Systems)
6.004 (Computation Structures)
Some HASS class

Now:
2.008 (Make a LED persistence of vision yoyo)
6.131 (Power electronics)
MAS.863 (How to make almost anything)
21M.611 (Foundations of Theater)
Possibly either 6.003 or 6.004, still.

In other words, I was ecstatic when I heard I got into MAS.863 and that flipped me in favor of not double-majoring in 2 and 6 (unless I decide to take an extra semester or something).

==mas.863==
Our first assignment:

design, make, and document a press-fit construction kit http://academy.cba.mit.edu/classes/computer_cutting/index.html

Trying to think of interesting new ideas, I thought of pressfitting food (sparked by my interest in etching poptarts for nyancat poptart). The hunt for a suitable material is on…
Gingerbread recipe: http://homecooking.about.com/od/cookierecipes/r/blcookie111.htm
Other house-building person: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/arch-sass-0703.html, http://cba.mit.edu/events/10.08.FAB6/Sass.pdf
Other materials guy: http://web.mit.edu/bin/cgicso?options=general&query=bredt came up with powder solution for 3d printing

(Other people’s projects, which overlapped with some of my other ideas:

animal figurines http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.10/people/Sarah.Hirschman/02cutters.html
)

General Prettiness:

Lights

Vase with pretty pattern due to interaction between round cut and grid inner cardboard layout

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.10/people/zhe.huang/week2.pdf, http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.10/people/phil.salesses/scrap-lamp/index.html

Lampshade + designs http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.09/people/gershon/week2.html

Messenger:

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.10/people/david.lakatos/02.html + electronics

Wheels:

robot http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.10/people/brian.mayton/02.html
detailed!awesome http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.10/people/dimitris.papanikolaou/Assignment_2.html
masonite car, flexures http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.09/people/mellis/pressfit/index.html

+electronics:

drum game http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.09/people/john/LCM.PDF

Polygons / sculpture

Joints

Foldable!joints http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.08/people/alex_schaub/pfk.html
more flexures http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.07/people/simon/assignment_02/MAS863_02.html
movable! More joints, wine bottle holder http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.06/people/nadav/assignment_2.htm
structural joints http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.06/people/pranav/, http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.06/people/matt/two.html
well-documented http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.06/people/mikey/dodecahedron.htm
Cams! http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.05/people/raphael/week2.htm
wooden dowel joints http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.04/people/ztaylor/

etching

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.10/people/adam.setapen/week2/

connectors kit

http://sqrlonpaper.com/laser.html
hearts http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.09/people/sarah/Laser_Cutter/LaserCutter_page_ooffice.html
letters http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.09/people/florence/week2/index.html
catapult! http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.09/people/ryan/week2/index.htm
finger puppets 😀 http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.07/people/eric/assignment2/
Rocking chair (derp, there goes another idea): http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.07/people/kyunghee/Assignment2.html
reminds me of some kit when i was little http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.05/people/chacha/
good doc http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.05/people/kccheung/index.html
House! http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.05/people/lass/dollhouse.html
another house http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.05/people/tom/tom_blog/assign/assign2/assign2.htm

origami

http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.10/people/akito.van.troyer/MAS863.html#Projects

functional

battery pouch http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.09/people/hannah/week2.html
screen holder http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.09/people/dcarr/press/press.html
lockers storage http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.08/people/ryan/week2.html
spice rack http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.08/people/courtney/week2/week2.html, and noncardboard http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.04/people/hoang/assignment_2a.html
motorcycle stand http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.06/people/michael_l/1.Bike.Stand/
picture frame http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.05/people/gracewoo/
Marble track! There went another idea 🙂 http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.05/people/wasshuber/#2
failed flute attempt http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.04/people/harrison/
macara http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.04/people/millner/week1.html
archery bow http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.04/people/jerry/main.html

Software:

cad.py http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.07/people/steve/gik.html
weird software http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.09/people/lifeform/02/index.html
more text CAD http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.06/people/david/2/

===2.008===

In the meantime, I’ve also been ignoring the present day and contemplating the near future of 2.008. I think we’re supposed to be making paperweight designs or something, but my partner is a but hard to contact, so I’ve fallen back on daydreaming about LED persistence-of-vision yoyo’s. Doesn’t seem to have been done already, surprisitngly. And now for linkspam research:

PoV
Other products

$5.16 PoV Fan http://www.dealextreme.com/p/customizable-text-handheld-led-message-display-cooling-fan-gadget-3-aa-17850

Looks a lot like this other fan featured on hackaday:
http://hackaday.com/2011/08/27/more-pov-fan-message-hacking/
Teardown: http://hackingwithgum.com/2009/10/06/hacking-the-cenzic-pov-fan/

large chip is the EEPROM (type of memory), with 4 pin headers to read/write
there must be a sensor (hall effect sensor? it’s a DC motor) in the circuit somewhere, but not easily discernible (perhaps it’s covered by epoxy?)
I only have one so I haven’t taken apart my own fan yet

$35 PoV Top (Luminodisc) http://www.gizmine.com/gzar/luminodisc.shtml

No teardowns available on the web, no cheap Chinese knockoffs either (and this is from 2009)
Nice closeup vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDzsrCLxPb8

DIY

2-sided and probably 4x as large as needed for yoyo. Use for component sourcing: http://drewish.com/blogger/archives/2005/03/17/2sided_pov_toy.html
uPoV: Further component sourcing ($6): http://rucalgary.hackhut.com/2011/04/26/upov-with-better-firmware-pics-video-and-source/
Arduino-based: http://www.instructables.com/id/LilyPad-Wrist-Band-POV/
Tiny! Nano POV: http://tomscircuits.blogspot.com/2009/06/nano-pov.html
General topic: http://www.opencircuits.com/POV_display
of the spinny super-quick kind: http://diytronics.blogspot.com/2010/12/cheap-pov-text-display.html

Yoyo

Spin-activated LED http://technabob.com/blog/2010/06/11/diy-spin-activated-led-yo-yo/
Another one: http://mondo-technology.com/yoyo.html

2.008 Yoyos
In order of awesomeness / completeness of online documentation:

Gallery: http://web.mit.edu/user/s/a/sangkim/Public/Big_files/yoyogallery/yoyogallery.htm
http://web.mit.edu/2.008/www/yoyogallery/yoyogallery.htm
M&M http://joshramos.wordpress.com/2-008-design-and-manufacture-ii-yo-yos/, http://kevinrustagi.posterous.com/yoyo-success-class-at-mit
Earphones http://web.mit.edu/imoyer/www/portfolio/2008/index.html
MIT (has deliverable) http://web.mit.edu/bubby/www/Sub/2008.html, another one (well doc’d): http://web.mit.edu/jgafford/www/home/yoyopage.htm, and yet another one: http://web.mit.edu/bubby/Public/2.008/Drawings/Assembly/Yoyo_ExplodedAssembly.pdf
Patriotic (has final presentation) http://elimarcdavis.blogspot.com/p/yo-yo.html
Minty http://bunnyfish-tamer.com/NewMIT/design/2.008/
Iron Man http://ultranos.dreamwidth.org/78315.html / http://web.mit.edu/turzaak/www/2.008.html
Whistling http://www.stephensteger.com/
Floating astronaut http://www.cposs.org/yoyo.html
Monkey yoyo http://web.mit.edu/nikolai/www/portfolio/Yoyo.html, http://mingleongdesign.com/design/yoyo.html
Efficiency http://jaredsartee.com/yoYo.html
His/her http://www.angelfire.com/super2/czheng/portfolio/yoyo/index.html
? http://www.afwidgets.com/portfolio/yo-yos-2/
Lego? http://martini.mitplw.com/YoYo.html
Car wheel http://siegelautomation.com/academic.html#
Another ball game one http://web.mit.edu/lgust/www/projects-IE.html, http://mit.edu/lgust/Public/Planeteers.pdf
Dragon http://web.mit.edu/yfwu/Public/2.008/yo%20yo%20assem2.PDF
? http://mit.edu/magnus89/Public/Classes/2.008%20S10/YoYo/Yoyo%20Exploded%20View.png
Apple: http://web.mit.edu/ttseng/www/portfolio/yoyo/index.html
hungry hippo? http://mit.edu/magnus89/Public/Classes/2.008%20S10/2.008%20Yoyo%20Overview.pdf… crazy complicated!
mario http://scripts.mit.edu/~ducktape/portfolio/2008.php
~Electrical: http://web.mit.edu/2.008/www/yoyogallery/light.JPG

Youtube videos:

Stable $ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoIZ3V4nd7I, http://web.mit.edu/sandals/Team%20Money%202.008%20Yo-Yo/, http://web.mit.edu/dfourie/www/2008.html
Brass Rat 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2H_6KsimCo
Ball game yoyo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKks5so4Nk0

==misc.===

RFID tags idea: oohh, someone in a previous 863 class had a similar idea for not forgetting things. Or rather, exact

same idea! Haha. http://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MIT/863.08/people/nadya/week1.html

and more on RFID: http://www.instructables.com/id/RFID-Reader-Detector-and-Tilt-Sensitive-RFID-Tag/

passive, duct tape + magnet wire: http://scanlime.org/2011/05/duct-tape-rfid-tag-1/

RFID explained http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00040ED1V01Y200602MPC001

Hexapods

Summer: Rideable hexapod, check

September 15, 2011 nouyang

teaser pic

Ah, where’ve I been all summer?

Having lots of fun, actually, but I’ve been hiding in my codefail cave and then I went and lost my camera.

Poof, hundreds of meticulous documentation pictures. Serves me right for not documenting as I go along / backing up my pictures.

Above is a pic of hexapod before I added the foot controls. Which are now being demoted in favor of joystick controls. But I did finish it in time for dorm rush / hall rush and gave lots of froshlings rides! And discovered some serious issues 🙂

Hexarideablepod is based off of a very detailed instructables called Hexabot. I’m slightly embarrassed by this fact, for whatever reason, and even though hexarideablepod only deserves my love (it already has my blood, sweat, and tears…)

Yea, that’s a racecar seat that my fellow MITERSians helped me recycle from an old unfinished vehicle 🙂

Hexapods

Strange and Beautiful Hexapods (Spider Robots), A Gallery

July 18, 2011 nouyang

Hexahelicopter: ridiculousness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wy0s0S8eZQ

Q: How many species of hexapods (six-legged robots) are there in the world? Oh, oh dear.
A: A mind-boggling awesomespectacular amount.

Here’s a compilation of some of the hexapod craziness out there. The sheer number of different hexapod designs out there is mind-blowing.

(p.s. for ideas of simple ways to build one, see my build post: http://www.orangenarwhals.com/?p=202)

Infinity Degrees-of-Freedom Style

To start off with, you guys have all watched the dancing hexapods, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msaWXY3OuQQ

Chopsticks (yes, the robot frame was made of snapped-in-half bamboo chopsticks o.o)

http://letsmakerobots.com/node/26107

[update 8 dec 2011] Cheaply, out of wood:

http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/showthread.php?4102-Low-Cost-Hexapod

Ant-like A-Pod

http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/showthread.php?t=2762

Hexapod that learns to walk using machine-learning algorithms! shiny shiny, and good music too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ovrT8pWww
http://hplusmagazine.com/2010/02/15/can-he-make-dancing-hexapod-robot-happy/

Tiny

http://www.custobots.com/products/pre-built-mini-hexapodinno-kc01001
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glNS81Kgk7g

Sexy

http://www.hexapodrobot.com/forum/viewtopic..php?f=5&t=389

Sheer Giant Awesomeness Style

Spider Tank (An entire series on Youtube!)

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/st_obsessed_robot/
The cute prototype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6qpSOjtB2E

How it works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is7x_atNl94 (someone attempts to explain it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJjX_YbqTC4)

The series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86Krv3gE-c4

Walking House-style (by MITERs alum Sam Kronick!) (yes, the scale of this is where humans fit inside easily)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkb6jfEwe0g
http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/WALKINGHOUSE/walkinghouse.html

Simple Linkage Style
General idea: Cant one side up and move legs forward.

3D printed

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5156

Rideable

http://www.instructables.com/id/Hexabot-Build-a-heavy-duty-six-legged-robot/

[update 8 dec 2011]
Look it’s bicycle powered

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJY1fqzuqL0

Tiny (Pololu)

Simple Hexapod Walker: http://www.pololu.com/docs/0J42
Knexapod

http://robotics.hobbizine.com/knexapod.html

Even simpler lego one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ9QOjx-7FQ

Boebots parallax:

Lego Pneumatics-style

http://www.visi.com/~dc/hexapod/index.htm

Mondo Spider– Hydraulic, electric

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE9HqGas7FM

Jensen / Klann Linkage style “hexapods”

(for a comparison of the linkages: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsRVu8BoSN4)

Uh… more like infinity legs. But same order of magnitude 🙂
Knex: http://robotics.hobbizine.com/knexabeast.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz4mflE2foM

Steam Powered! Wow.

http://www.crabfu.com/steamtoys/rc_steam_spider/ The Crabfu site has many other wonders as well.

And semi-relatedly, cute mini-windbeest. D’awww…

http://crabfuartworks.blogspot.com/2011/01/gakken-otona-no-kagaku-strandbeest.html

Holy cow that’s robots on speed. This just has to be watched, no image will do it justice:
Hyper fast robot line following http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XiRxNkZleY
(more closeups here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Soq9qpK5Ac)

[update 8 dec 2011]
Rideable
okay, not simple-linkage-style, but rideable! yay

http://www.orangenarwhals.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/uak5f.gif

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE9HqGas7FM&feature=fvst

Research Hexapods

(theses are an excellent source of juicy details!)
DASH Resilient High-Speed 16-gram Hexapedal Robot
By “resilient”, they mean “let me drop this robot off a the roof of a ten-story building and have it walk away perfectly fine”…. o___O (28 meters, actually)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsTKAtBBkfU
Thesis: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~paulb/IROS09_DASH_submitted.pdf

Origami hexapod?

http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ronf/Prototype/index.html
Climbing robot, DIGbot (awesome site!): http://biorobots.case.edu/projects/climbing/digbot/

About halfway through this vid, it climbs up a tree trunk! http://biorobots.case.edu/projects/climbing/digbot/natural_1.wmv
The thesis: http://biorobots.case.edu/projects/climbing/digbot/thesis_Diller.pdf

Another climbing robot, RiSE:
http://kodlab.seas.upenn.edu/~rise/newsite/

Pneumaticals and FAST and cute -^-^- Stanford Sprawl and iSprawl: (esp. see 0:43 mark)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC4vWKenA7Y
The website: http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/biomimetics/ (click on “Robots”: http://www-cdr.stanford.edu/biomimetics/documents/sprawl/)
Thesis: http://bdml.stanford.edu/twiki/pub/Rise/IndependentSprawl/Kim_A038_CLAWAR04.pdf

Rhex, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhex, http://kodlab.seas.upenn.edu/RHex/Home

Stiquito, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiquito, http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/2574/1/Rosano%20PhD%20Thesis.pdf

Random thesis with a lot of theory and less building: http://poisson.me.dal.ca/~dp_08_02/Site/Documentation_files/Build_Report.pdf

Controls Thesis nom nom: http://www.sigada.org/ada_letters/march2002/thirion.pdf

MIT Leg Lab Controls thesis: http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/leglab/robots/robots.html

(pdf at http://www.ihmc.us/users/jpratt/publications/jpratt_masters_thesis1995.pdf)

Thesis-y youtube vid, background on hexapods:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eunuHrTPS1o

Old-school 18 motor hexapod, back in the 1980s: Odex I

http://www.theoldrobots.com/odex.html
Schematic: http://www.genomicon.com/2009/09/the-functionoids-are-coming/

NASA GIANT hexapod, wheeled hybrid “ATHLETE”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwFrCpYavt4

What the…

Oh, and then you can use your robot as a platform and attach weird things to it. 😀
18 servo planter (Farmbot) — lynxmotion body

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACtihXjq2B0

18 servo CNC Hexapod Router

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quN37YskoaM
Construction details: http://www.hexapodrobot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=12

Toys
ELEKIT MR-9722, aka Avoider III http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nc-viPoI1iY

Hexbugs, which seem like toy rip-offs of research robots / the internet (Jamie, of Spider Tank / Wired fame, was a bit upset about this):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexbug

And that’s all for today folks. Whew.
Hope that gives some inspiration for building hexapod / spider / legged / AWESOME robots 🙂

Appendix

Sellers: (product datasheets are an excellent source of information for advice on how to build your own)

Lynxmotion Hexapod products: http://www.lynxmotion.com/c-3-hexapods.aspx
http://www.trossenrobotics.com/Quadropod-Robot-Hexapod-Robot-Kits.aspx
http://en.innovati.com.tw/down/class/?3.html (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbySvo31neI)
http://www.crustcrawler.com/products/hexcrawler.php?prod=1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xBEk7QWqHY) — good datasheet!

Misc. Documentation:

My main aids in this search: (I mirrored the images, because I hate seeing beautiful image collections destroyed by dead links)

http://letsmakerobots.com/taxonomy/term/81 “hexapod” (relatedly, http://letsmakerobots.com/taxonomy/term/7311 “spider”)
http://hackaday.com/tag/hexapod/
Hexapod art gallery: http://www.hexapodrobot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=389
Trossen Robotics Forum Gallery: http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/gallery/index.php
Dancing Hexapod Forum Gallery: http://193.170.124.251/hexapod/forum/jgs_galerie.php

I mirrored the images here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/nancy.ouyang/StrangeAndBeautifulHexapodsMirroringImagesFromTheWeb

And, in closing, lego shrimp climbing! An entirely different way of solving “how to climb over obstacles.”
Lego Technic SHRIMP http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW4LJW6j05E

Puaghhhh. Who knew compiling images would eat 6 hours of my life???

====
edit 10/13/2010: more hexapods, don’t think they’re mobile but so pretty!

http://www.microbotic.org/singer.htm

=====
edit 17 dec 2011:

http://www.hizook.com/blog/2011/11/28/jambots-soft-robots-based-particle-jamming-hexapod-irobot
eeeee particle jamming hexapod! hehe. soft hexapod~~

orange narwhals

Yearly Archives: 2011

Ideas: PoV Yoyo, Press-fit food || Classes, Spring 2011

Summer: Rideable hexapod, check