"Proxie" a tele-existence robot with the Propeller
egenriether
Posts: 29
Proxie is a tele-existence robot I made with the Propeller (or a couple of them anyways) It's my first project with the Propeller and I've been at it for about 2 years on and off. It is still *very much* in progress, I'd say it's getting to the half-way finished mark. It still needs arms, of which I have a mock-up working now. It also needs an articulating post on which it will stand (currently just wooden 2 x 4s) The body, head, and helmet are made from a lightweight epoxy I use for most projects. The head tracking is done with my hacked up version of Jason Dorie's awesome DCM code he posted a couple years ago (Thanks again Jason, you're the man!)
The robot has 3-D (stereoscopic) video and audio wirelessly transmitted to a "ground station" which the helmet plugs into. It's controlled by Xbee (API) signals from the helmet and remote, both of which talk to the same antenna on the robot
Here's a quick look:
If you want to see pictures of the build, they are on my website:
http://www.egenriether.com/proxie.html
along with more info on the project. The arms will be bionic-style arms that will be controlled by gloves and an arm band worn on the upper arm. The arm model currently uses 4 props (yes props, not cogs!) that communicate using Beau Schwabe's prop to prop communication scheme. There are inertial sensors on the upper and lower arm and they are combined using what I call SDCM or Synthesized Direction Cosine Matrix. That's basically a fancy (and unnecessary) name for the math model I made which combines two DCMs in one prop, and left multiplies the lower DCM by the transpose of the upper DCM to calculate the proper frame of reference for the lower arm. Basically I need to know the position of the lower arm relative to the upper arm, not the initial (Earth) frame of reference like a typical DCM. This prevents the elbow joints from actuating when the user's elbow is kept straight but the upper arm moves.
A few thanks are in order:
Jason Dorie
Martin Hebel
Beau Schwabe
Johnny Mac
Mike Green
and of course Parallax as a whole!
Any questions or comments are welcome!
--Brian
The robot has 3-D (stereoscopic) video and audio wirelessly transmitted to a "ground station" which the helmet plugs into. It's controlled by Xbee (API) signals from the helmet and remote, both of which talk to the same antenna on the robot
Here's a quick look:
If you want to see pictures of the build, they are on my website:
http://www.egenriether.com/proxie.html
along with more info on the project. The arms will be bionic-style arms that will be controlled by gloves and an arm band worn on the upper arm. The arm model currently uses 4 props (yes props, not cogs!) that communicate using Beau Schwabe's prop to prop communication scheme. There are inertial sensors on the upper and lower arm and they are combined using what I call SDCM or Synthesized Direction Cosine Matrix. That's basically a fancy (and unnecessary) name for the math model I made which combines two DCMs in one prop, and left multiplies the lower DCM by the transpose of the upper DCM to calculate the proper frame of reference for the lower arm. Basically I need to know the position of the lower arm relative to the upper arm, not the initial (Earth) frame of reference like a typical DCM. This prevents the elbow joints from actuating when the user's elbow is kept straight but the upper arm moves.
A few thanks are in order:
Jason Dorie
Martin Hebel
Beau Schwabe
Johnny Mac
Mike Green
and of course Parallax as a whole!
Any questions or comments are welcome!
--Brian
Comments
http://www.inmoov.fr/
Thanks for sharing the link. I just spent 30 mins on the website and its really neat. I like the construction of the Inmoov. Its cool looking and I like that it's 3-D printed. As for Proxie, his arms and hands are already designed it's just a matter of getting the money to go from the mini-mockup phase to the full size thing. One issue I'd have with InMoov is the high latency. My hand/arm model has the same latency as the head tracking since I developed them with the same technology.
@Tor, I was under the impression everyone in Japan already had a personal robot!
-Thanks