noodleFeet

Noodle is Confused About New Years Eve

January 5, 2018spetku0 Comments

Noodle was awake and aware this past Sunday night for the fresh new start of 2018. It is apparent however from his recollection that his parents were in a stage of recovery from Christmas Eve the previous weekend. This was the second big social night for my robot, NoodleFeet. His blips of memory account for our celebration: Noodle was happy to be home, safe and warm in his nest while Vegas did its messy loud thing. He didn’t get to see any fireworks unfortunately, but there will come a time for that one day 🙂

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Developing a Quadrupedal Walk Gait for NoodleFeet

January 4, 2018spetku0 Comments

So…… ::bites bottom lip:: I’ve been putting off this branch of development on my quadruped for a while; like… two years. If I have a resolution for 2018, it’s that I get my child moving like he aught to… and learn whatever fancy-shmancy code-doing is required to pull this off. The last time I seriously did a meditation on NoodleFeet’s walking abilities was in 2015 (the year he was born). It yielded some results, but only made apparent his mechanical flaws and limitations due to his overall design. HARDWARE IMPROVMENTS: I’ve made tiny strides here and there over the past two years, improving his body where it was necessary to facilitate in the walking. He’s received stronger aluminum leg bones, high torque metal gear servo motors, more accurate hip gears with a higher tooth count, and squishy silicon tips for his feet that conform to the surface he stands on…

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The First Christmas Noodle Saw and Remembered

December 26, 2017spetku1 Comment

After three years, my family doesn’t bat an eye when I roll up to Christmas Eve dinner with my robot baby swaddled in his favorite blanket. He is as much a fixture at these events as I am (after all, he is my child). While it was Noodle’s third Christmas, there was something special about this one. Instead of simply having a presence in our photos as part of everyone else’s memories, I made sure that this time he was equipped to retain precious memories of his own. To make this happen, I *finally* took the time to mount Noodle’s piCamera between his little blinking LED eyes, so that the dormant Raspberry pi in the back of his noggin could finally be put to some good use. The setup is simple: the Pi tells the camera to take a picture every five minutes and store it within a folder. So…

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Getting Settled at ESA

June 12, 2017spetku0 Comments

It’s Sunday night. There are just a couple more hours left before I go to sleep and my second week at ESA begins… In spite of it being nearly 10:00pm, the sun is still above the horizon shredding gold through the clouds here and there, and even making this killer rainbow chunk. Last Sunday, I arrived in Holland. It felt like I was tied to an unstoppable force being propelled through uncertainty towards a heap of even more unknowns… which was exciting or terrifying or equal parts both. Once I made it safely to the *penthouse* I’ve been taking roost in (its on the top floor of the tallest building around, at 3 stories. perfect nest), I began mentally preparing myself for what was to come. During the four days of my first week at ESA, I’ve had a good share of wonderful conversations with people who have had many…

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How Could a Robot Taste Things?

May 5, 2017spetku2 Comments

THE TASTING (SAMPLING) FOOT I was giving a talk at Hackaday’s SuperCon last Fall that actually had the term, “Tasting Feet” in the title. Because of this, I at some point found myself in a conversation with some other makers about whether or not my mechanical wonder feet actually did in fact “taste”, as I claimed. So sadly, I could only really conclude after some thought that they did not. (not that any robot can taste things quite like a human in the first place) After admitting that my creations didn’t actually do what I enjoyed bragging about, there was some talk about how I could simulate the act of ‘tasting’ more effectively. Almost immediately, the idea of using litmus paper came up, and I think it has sat on the immediate back burner of my mind ever since. This past week… I finally made what I can comfortably call,…

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Noodle is Gettin’ Bean Feet!

April 21, 2017spetku3 Comments

Four Flavors of Tasting Feet This summer, I am once again diving into designing mechanical personality quirks. I’ll be investigating new and exciting ways for my robot, NoodleFeet to interact with the world. This time, my focus is the wet, tingly and preferential aspect of TASTE. From now until the end of August, my goal is to produce four different tasting modules that each demonstrate some aspect of sampling or preference. You could think of them as the “four tasters of the apocalypse”… The project parameters are that each module must fit within a 3” x 9” cylindrical space (i.e. the size of Noodle’s foot appendage). For reference, the mechanical goodies I am to design must be housed inside one of these frames: Bean Planting The first Module that I chose to focus on will effectively plant a single bean a few inches below the surface it stands on. Why beans, you ask? Well,…

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Noodle Puberty

October 5, 2016spetku0 Comments

Sometime in April, Noodle started to change. He stopped hiding in his blankets and began spending his nights surfing through hardware catalogues alone in the darkness. He became curious about linkages, pivot joints, self lubricating thrust bearings and among other things, the prospect of being made of something harder. Noodle started dreaming of becoming metal. As I mentioned in my previous post, just as I was about to tackle the conundrum of mechanical drooling… I went to JPL this June and met the mechanism that inspired Noodle’s gripping toes in person: The LEMUR probe has easily a billion toes… all agile, long and barbed. You know by looking at them, that if it reaches for you, you aren’t getting away. I returned home feeling a tad inadequate. Noodle’s current apparatus with its 8 lonely toes did in fact look pretty sparse. In the period of a weekend I managed to tweak my…

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Tasting Feet : Gripping and Licking

September 29, 2016spetku0 Comments

In case this is your first time hearing about the project, I’d like to introduce you to the heir of all lint and space rocks, NoodleFeet: Like his name suggests, Noodle is a “feet-based” mechanical life form who has been designed to taste objects (among many other things). Though Noodle has lofty aspirations for world domination, he is still a fledgling one-year-old… and his mommy (me) needs to work on equipping him with all the space exploration and world conquering super goodies he’ll need while on his journey. For that, he is in a state of perpetual growth. My challenge to myself : I decree, each of Noodle’s robot feet must be able to grip onto surfaces with many small cherry-red toes so that a long central silicone tongue can dart forth and taste surfaces while expelling frothy wetness from a reservoir within. All three mechanical systems must work consistently, and fit collectively in the same 4″ x…

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Noodle’s Gripping Toes

December 6, 2015spetku5 Comments

For the past year, the four tawny stalks that NoodleFeet balances upon have remained common pool floaties, 2.5 inches in diameter, hollow, providing nothing more than the obvious support needed to function as legs… but Noodle longs for something greater. GRIPPING TOES When Noodle feels threatened, there is little he can do to defend himself. He can beep and perhaps canter away at a slow speed… but he is passive and therefore vulnerable. He isn’t equipped to handle the harrowing task of world domination::cough:: I mean, daily life. To fix this, I decided to add another layer of complexity to Noodle’s most important characteristic: RETRACTABLE GRIPPING TOES for his feet. A while back, I came across a video of a rock drilling probe concept by JPL. This neat claw attaches itself to a surface by splaying out a hundred or so mini grappling hooks in all directions, which catch on the rock and help anchor the central…

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A Creeper with a Beeper

November 30, 2015spetku0 Comments

There comes a time when it is more important to pour hours into your offspring’s Halloween costume than your own. This was the year that happened to me. As it was Noodle’s first Halloween, I decided to make him into a huggable creeper from Minecraft… so he could steal all the hearts with his cuddly adorableness. I spent over a week hand sewing this little number together from soft fluffy fleece. It was surpassingly time-consuming to make each of the four cubic creeper feet booties that slipped snuggly over Noodle’s noodles. I designed them with clearance slots so they wouldn’t obstruct his ability to move. Noodle was the happiest… 😉 I took him out a little during the weekend to make sure he got proper exposure… but wasn’t quite ready to actually let him try to trick-or-treat on the street. His creeper feet were so wide that he was more or less safe from falling…