Tribotix - News & Interesting Robotic stuff ....

ROBIO2009

2009-01-19T19:29:00.002+11:00

HeartLander is being Commericalised ....

2008-11-18T07:19:00.004+11:00

In April this year I posted an article on Heartlander, "a miniature mobile robot that delivers minimally invasive therapy to the surface of the beating heart".

Over the weekend I received an email from the people who developed Heartlander letting me know that Heartlander is now being commericalised, information can now be found at the website for HeartLander Surgical's website.

Info on this website tell us that HeartLander is "currently on its third generation, the device is only 8.5mm in diameter. Enhancements could shrink HeartLander to 3mm". Pretty amazing.

Weirdest robotic application I have ever seen ....

2008-11-09T21:05:00.012+11:00

I was helping my son do an assignment on taste - he chose to do his assignment on the tongue. We needed a picture of the tongue, so I typed tongue into Google Image search.

I could hardly believe that I found Robotic Cow Tongues .... WTF, a linked image is shown below.

A robotic cow tongue - believe it or not ....

The actual article on robotic cow tongues was published in September 2007. These works of art were by Korean artist Doo Sung Yoo and were featured on the we make money not art web site, which has a section specially devoted to Robots.

Not so weird ....

Below is a picture of one of the featured robotic art works from the we make money not art web site - Artificial Curiosity by France Cadet exhibited at the numeriscausa gallery in France. A video of other pieces from this exhibit, with French narrative, is also available.

Gaude Mihi ('amuse me', 'entertain me'), image linked from here.

"As soon as the robot feels a presence it starts balancing itself. All the robot wants is to have fun without any consideration whatsoever for the entertainment of its owner, it rejects 'interactivity' (the presence of a proximity sensor is not enough to qualify the piece as really interactive) and participation, redefining in the process the roles of the toy and the player." (text from here)

DSTO unveils SPIKER and RASP

2008-10-30T11:47:00.004+11:00

There was an online article in Sacrificial robot will save soldiers' lives on a robot developed by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO). This robot is called SPIKER, Special Purpose IED Killer Experimental Robot and costs around $15,000 - approximately 10% of the cost of current bomb disposal robots.

SPIKER - Image linked from Australian Department of Defense web site.

The article goes on to mention another robot developed by the DSTO, the RASP - Remote Advanced Sensor Platform. RASP will be used to track down radioactive materials.

RASP - Image linked from Australian Department of Defense web site.

Alternate use for an Industrial Robot ....

2008-09-14T23:14:00.002+10:00

I received this video in an email and thought it was too good not to share. This is the best use I've seen for an Industrial Robot .... NOT for the faint hearted.

This video is called 'Lunchtime at the Ford Factory' and it looks like the original was uploaded to FILECABI.NET.

Wonder if they did an OH&S risk assessment before starting this project.

TAFE's Digi-Girls ICT Week Activity

2008-07-25T08:21:00.004+10:00

Tribotix have been an Industry Partner of TAFE's Digi-Girl program for over 3 years now and we will be again be assisting with the delivery of the highly successful robotics program from 29th July ~ 30th July at Meadowbank TAFE. This delivery is part of National ICT Careers Week activities in NSW.

Below is a promotional video showing a sample of what happens over the 2 days.

Digi-Girls Robotics

This program is great fun, and also gives the Year 9~12 girls and insite in career opportunites in Engineering and Computer Science.

Uni of Newcastle's NUManoids win SPL at RoboCup

2008-07-20T16:30:00.012+10:00

The University of Newcastle's NUManoids have won the 2-legged league in the Standard Platform League at RoboCup in Suzhou, China. The NUManoid team replaced the NUBots (Sony Aibo based team) early this year, the NUBots have retired after winning RoboCup 2006 and having finished in the top 3 at RoboCup since entering (2002~2007).

After reaching the semi-finals Stephan Chalup, one of the Academic supervisors with the team, said "this is a very good result given this year’s short preparation time and selection of strong competitors". Stephan went on to say that "tomorrow the NUManoids will play in the final match of the league against a very strong American team which is a joint effort of Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Tech".

The final was decided by Penalty shoot-out (the penalty shootout was judged based on the time to score a goal) where the NUManoids were victorious 1-0.

Full results of the competition can be viewed here.

The NUManoid team is lead by Naomi Henderson, this is the first year Naomi has had this responsibility. As well as being a 'robot soccer playing programming guru' Naomi describes herself as "a post graduate uni student who programs robots to play soccer by day and a 'cupcake ninja' by night".

Naomi's hidden talent was brought to our attention by a Blog on CNET.com. Have a look for yourself at Naomi's work, an example of which is shown below.

Everyone at Tribotix would like to pass on our congratulations to all associated with the NUManoids - they continually achieve excellent results through simple hard work, congratulations ....

HyKim Case Study at ASK-OSS

2008-07-01T22:58:00.005+10:00

Last Month I attended TechGirls, an event organised by Youth Connections, to promote Engineering and IT options for girls. At this event I was lucky enough to meet Pia Waugh, Pia's is a very active person in the Australian Linux & Open Source communities being:

appointed Research Co-ordinator of the Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software project (ASK-OSS),
a former President & (2003~2004) and Vice President (2005-2007) of Linux Australia, and
Project Leader for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project in Australia.

Pia has put together a case study for HyKim on Australian Service for Knowledge of Open Source Software (ASK-OSS) web site. It's great that people in the open-source community are starting to take an interest in our work.

HyKim & HyInt User Manuals available online

2008-06-27T06:47:00.004+10:00

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we now have a Tribotix Wiki which we will be using for our User Manuals for HyKim (21DOF Robot Bear) & HyInt (powerful robotic processing system). All the information, such as schematics, source code, firmware and component datasheets for these two products/projects are available from this wiki.

Any questions or comments are most welcome.

HeartLander

2008-04-01T23:15:00.006+11:00

This is a pretty amazing robot, "HeartLander is a miniature mobile robot that delivers minimally invasive therapy to the surface of the beating heart" - this quote is taken from the HeartLander web page.

Heartlander was designed at The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon. The Heartlander lists the major media coverage for this robot, the New York Times has a really good diagram showing the Heartlander and explaining how it works - the HeartLander "uses suction to adhere to a beating heart. Moving like an inchworm, it can reach areas that now require doctors to deflate a patients lungs".

There are some really impressive video's as well - amazing that something so small can be controlled like this to make surgery less invasive.

Finally .... information is on our web site for our Robot Bear Hykim

2008-03-24T22:30:00.008+11:00

Yes, we finally have added information about our Robot Bear, named Hykim, on our web site - sorry this took so long but we have so much going at the same time it's hard to get everything done quickly (I'm sure you'll understand). Anyway, the collage from our home page is shown below - be sure to have a look at ALL Hykim's features.

The processing system used in Hykim has been named HyInt, an acronym/abbreviation for Hykim's Intelligence. This will be sold as a stand alone processing system that can be used in any system where Dynamixels (AX, DX & RX) are used. The picture below shows a HyInt fitted to the University of Newcastle's (Australia) CycloidII - they have 2 of these which have been fitted with HyInt for research being done by post-graduate students.

Anyway, have a look at our website - there's lots of detailed information. User Manuals, in the form of Wiki's, are currently being finalised for both Hykim and HyInt.

BEST robot video we have seen for a long time

2008-03-17T22:34:00.003+11:00

This is the BEST robot video we have seen for a long time. BigDog is made by Boston Dynamics in the US, on their web site they claim BigDog is 'The Most Advanced Quadruped Robot on Earth'. After watching the video below I'm sure you will agree.

The part in the video where the quadruped slips on the ice and is able to regain balance and walk away is amazing. But the part where the quadruped runs/bounds the jumps to me is the most impressive thing in this video.

Mining bonanza drives robot boom

2008-02-12T21:23:00.003+11:00

Interesting article online today in The Australian, Mining bonanza drives robot boom.

I remember there used to be some short documentaries on TV (long time ago) where the CSIRO would show of some of it's research. I remember seeing a story once about underground autonomous vehicles - in the short documentary they had unmanned machines navigating through 'tents' that simulated the walls underground. If my memory is correct, then maybe this is one of the items that CSIRO is claiming as it's "robotic mining plans first hashed out in the early 1990s" .

Doing a Google search for 'CSIRO robot mining' uncovers 2 articles written in 2000 on CSIRO's work:

May 04 , 2000 Robots to invade our mines, and
Sep 04 , 2000 Robots make mines safer.

In the first article it says "Within five years, robots will operate large parts of Australia's underground mining industry, CSIRO's deputy chief executive for minerals and energy, Dr Bruce Hobbs said today." Well maybe now the mining companies have plenty of money things may move a little quicker - good for Australian Robotic R&D.

Cool Bioloid Transformer robots

2008-02-03T21:21:00.000+11:00

I stumbled across these videos on YouTube the other day, there are very very good ....

Have a look at:
1. Real Transformer - Bioloid -
2. Real Transformer Upgrade Version -Humvee Bioloid-
3. Robot Soccer (Bioloid)

Amazing what you can do with LOTs of time.

Pictures of our Robot Bears

2007-12-24T23:29:00.001+11:00

Well it's Christmas Eve and we have finally finished our first Robot Bear made entirely out of RX modules. So, I decided to take a few pictures of both our bears - these can be viewed in the 'linked album' below.

Robot Bear Images

The new RX Robot Bear is now on his/her way to Ireland - lets hope it arrives safely and there is a Guiness waiting for him/her.

P.S. we have to think of a name for the Robot Bear - anyone have any ideas?

UoN Girls Summer School 2007

2007-12-14T23:02:00.000+11:00

On December 11th, 12th & 13th Tribotix presented a 2hr presentation/workshop for 180 Year 9 Girls. The girls were in Newcastle as part of the 'Summer School 2007', which is a program ran by the University of Newcastle to encourage young girls to consider careers in Science, Engineering and IT.

We tried to make to make the presentation/workshop as interesting and hands on as possible. The highlight was a game of 3vs3 Robot Dog Soccer. We provided 6 Robot Dogs made from the Bioloid Kit, we then modified the CM5 to add Bluetooth. Using a PC with a LabView VI and a USB Bluetooth Dongle the girls where then able to remotely control the robot dogs.

The video above shows some of this game, as well as me (I made it on the TV, my 15 seconds of fame) showing the girls our robot bear.

Was the game of Robot Dog soccer a success? Well, yes and no - the Robot Dogs legs kept falling off. There is a weakness where the 2 brackets connect (via 4 M2.5 screws) - these screws work there way loose as the Robot Dogs 'jump' around. This could have been fixed by some loctite BUT these are Bioloids we re-use so loctite was not an option. It was alot of fun though ....

We made the Papers

2007-12-07T22:15:00.000+11:00

On Wednesday (5/12/07) the Newcastle Morning Herald (NMH) took some photo's of the Robot Bear, Micheal Dickinson (body suit designer) and me. The photographer from the NMH was kind enough to give us copies of some of the photo's, these can be seen in the 'linked album' below.

Photo's from NHM Photo Shoot

The article itself was titled 'Logical to put robot in school' and was published on the following Friday (7/12/07). A scanned copy of the article can also be found in the 'linked album'.

Robotis's URIA

2007-12-06T22:07:00.002+11:00

Robotis have been talking for sometime about their CycloidII follow-up, called the URIA or Ubiquitous Robotic Information Assistant - now that is a mouthful. This was originally due for release in Nov07 but we haven't had confirmation yet when it will be available to us. A picture of an early prototype is shown below.

Robotis's URIA

Aweb site called DigInfo.tv (Daily Video News from Japan) have put together an interesting story on the URIA. The video can be seen at their web site or by clicking on the image below:

The following text is copied from their site: "Ubiquitous Robotic Information Assistant or URIA was developed by Korean Company ROBOTIS to help researchers by providing a robot with a wide array of capabilities and sensors in order to gather information. URIA has a USB port, LAN, VGA out and Wifi capabilities to send and receive data from its microphone, USB camera or many other sensors. URIA has an embedded PC that runs Windows XP and can display information on the LCD screen built into its chest. The many actuators in the joints of URIA use Dynamixel all in one actuators which can provide information about position, speed internal temperature and input voltage. Along with that information, there is a passive infrared sensor, an FSR and a 6 axis gyro sensor so researchers can gather a variety of information. At a height of 57 cm and weighing 5.5 kgs, URIA has good stability even on uneven terrain."

Can't wait till we get to have a play with this ....

A new way of doing things ....

2007-12-01T14:57:00.000+11:00

Well, we've decided that a Blog would be the best way to keep everyone updated with what's new at Tribotix - editing our html based pages gets a little 'clumsy', so we are going to see if a Blog is any more efficient.

So, this is our first post - stay tuned for more .... hopefully on a daily basis, provided there is something interesting to say.