ROBOHEMIAN

noodleFeet

noodleFeet : Animating the Noodle

June 30, 2015spetku1 Comment

I’ve spent the last week learning After Effects. For someone who uses Illustrator on a daily basis, this feels a lot like discovering the magic hat from Fantasia. Among other things, AE allows you to turn a vector based 2D image into a fully rigged character for animation… and it’s even easier to do than you’d think. I had the idea a while ago to make a series of videos about Noodle and his adventures to Mars… The original plan was that they would be stop-motion shorts, made with a tiny 3D printed version of noodle as the puppet. There is no better terrain to fake as the surface of Mars than our very own desert outskirts… but alas, it is HOT out these days. Even if I could handle the relentless sun (which I can’t because I am WHITE), the PLA that the tiny noodle is made out of cannot. So much for the stop-motion thing. For scale (his eyes…

Light Play

Maker Faire 2015

June 2, 2015spetku1 Comment

I’ve been home for almost two weeks now from our Bay Area pilgrimage and life has pretty much reset. I rewarded myself by binge playing Starbound all weekend and partaking in other mindless immersive activities I’ve been too busy to enjoy so far this year. It was a nice break. But back to work! I’m going to close this chapter by recapping our big adventure: Over all, Maker Faire went firkin awesome! Last year = shitty location + loud tesla coils + high maintenance demo + no place to escape for peace and quiet. Since we had ample time to plan, we eliminated all these stress points! TRANSPORTATION Our project this year was three times bigger than before at 84 individual nodes, so smashing them in the back of Mark’s Kia wasn’t an option. We didn’t quite have the money to spend on buying our own permanent trailer either, so for this trip we rented…

General Stuff

Pinhole Day

May 7, 2015spetku0 Comments

I would like you to meet “crappy box” : Without ritual, life lacks meaning. Whether it be a drink every evening at 5 to celebrate the day conquered, or watching the playoffs each season to show pride for your hometown… the little things we assign significance to reward us with moments of privately observed fulfillment. The last Sunday of April each year is World-Wide Pinhole Photography Day. On this one day, people take strange, unique and beautiful pictures with hand-made cameras and then submit one to an online gallery archive. When you think about it… this is a pretty frikkin awesome thing. Somehow every April thousands of people all over the world remember to try out their newest pinhole creation or photographic technique and then upload a single image to represent an idea from their life on that day. It’s a collaborative snapshot of the world as a whole, and its become one of my life rituals. I should probably mention…

Light Play

Light Play : Half Way There

April 27, 2015spetku1 Comment

I’m tired. I will forever look at big art installations and wonder with silent reverence if there were two people at some point sitting on their couch at three in the morning assembling parts to the thing by hand. Any how… WE’RE HALF WAY THERE! Two days ago everything came together at last. One by one we tested and plugged the new babies into their happy little nests. We even named a whole pallet after our favorite characters from Create TV, which we’ve had on in the background while doing a lot of the manual labor. Long story short, Mark fired up his Netbeans GUI and everything just worked. With a little tweaking over the weekend we got the 42 little ones to behave more or less like we were imagining. Mark even figure out how to turn off the stupid thing in the Kinect example code that waits for a hand wave…

noodleFeet

noodleFeet : Looks Like a Noodle

April 22, 2015spetku0 Comments

HEAD : I can’t find a damn semi-transparent mixing bowl to appropriate as Noodle’s noggin. So, I went with a plastic bowl I bought a while back because it was Robot Army gray and yellow. The size isn’t right, but tilted at an angle with his eyes poking out it looks a lot like a helmet… and I’m okay with that. SHOULDERS : I went to the store with Mark yesterday and searched through all of the collars in the pet isle to find a replacement for his old harness which no longer fits around his new planetary gear assembly. There were many small kitty-sized bands with big jingly bells… but not a single one was in neon yellow. So I didn’t bother getting any. In leu, I smashed noodle’s old harness back onto his gear box so that if needed I can still hook him into the leash hanging from the ceiling above the work…

Light Play

Light Play : Brains Nerves and Butts

April 16, 2015spetku0 Comments

This past weekend Mark and I got a bunch more work done for the installation. We finished glueing and painting all the shiny black honeycomb pallets, so all twelve of them are now stacked neatly waiting to receive delta babies. …which means we need to build lots… and LOTs of delta babies. Thankfully, as I sit here and write this, that part is mostly done. For the past week or so the living room has transformed into a birthing chamber of plastic bins and Create TV. At an average of 15-20 minutes a piece, we built around 50ish more base assemblies. That’s the acrylic bit with the three motors attached. Obviously, they aren’t full deltas yet. They’re missing their snazzy yellow arms and blinky LED on top, but we wanted to get the hard part out-of-the-way first. The next step is to calibrate all of these little delta butts, and then screw all the grey…

Light Play

Light Play : Spawning for Maker Faire

April 1, 2015spetku2 Comments

Maker Faire in San Mateo is imminent! Last year my partner Mark and I showed an installation of 30 delta robots which mimicked the physical gestures of people. All of the robots however did the exact same thing… which was impressive if you’ve never seen them before, but hardly to the extent of awesome I have in mind for the project. Though we’ve been working hard, Light Play still has a long way to go development-wise. Until they’re feeding off neural input and hopping through cities in flocks, I’m continuing to slowly expand our numbers. For now, that number is 84, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot in the face of the thousand I dream of having… yet as I sit on the couch night after night building these little monsters, 84 feels plenty enough to my calloused finger-tips: This is what takes the most time to assemble. The motors mounted to their…

noodleFeet

noodleFeet : All Wired and Ready

February 19, 2015spetku2 Comments

When your baby is learning to walk, you make sure its near soft things and away from stairs so that when the inevitable fall occurs, they don’t collapse into pieces. When your baby is a robot learning to walk, bungie chords and harnesses are also needed. And in the case with noodle, who is delicate and wobbly like a skittish baby fawn, I am sparing no precaution! The noodle Harness Robots get rigging. Mark took the time this weekend and installed a guide wire on the ceiling over our work table. A “leash” hangs down from this wire and clips on to noodle’s smashing neon-yellow harness which wraps around all four of his legs. If he loses his balance, he won’t have very far to fall before the leash pulls tight and catches him. Calibration! Before assembling noodle for his big day, I had to calibrate all of the servo motors to 90º. Only then could…

noodleFeet

noodleFeet : Goes Metal

February 8, 2015spetku0 Comments

I’ve relied on 3D printing for so many of my prototypes lately, and have finally come to a point where plastic won’t cut it any longer. I require metal, in this case aluminum. The likes of which I ordered from McMaster-Carr and received in the mail last week. I literally spent the majority of the weekend meditating over how to measure my cuts and holes… as for the first time in a long time, their accuracy and placement was entirely up to me and my calipers, not some Cartesian goo plotter as I’m so spoiled by… While everyone was downing beer and watching the Stuperbowl, I was in the garage with Mark playing with his father’s ancient drill press. He eyeballed one axis, I checked it against the other, and we were able to punch the 24 holes needed on the four pieces of aluminum tubing which would soon be noodleFeet’s strong new legs. As…

noodleFeet

noodleFeet : Proof of Concept

January 27, 2015spetku0 Comments

Last week I started building a new robot who I’m calling noodleFeet! He is essentially a spider-type walker who will locate nearby legs, approach and then lean on them. In addition to having that specific purpose, he needs to look a particular way. I’ve been drawing him in the margin of my notes for weeks now, so he’s become something of a character to me: In order to make a robot that does these things, I need to design the mechanism itself and how it will be attached to the motors driving the motion (challenging and fun). At the same time I need to learn about Open CV and figure out how to make a computer recognize all the different shapes that legs come in. This will involve a camera and some coding (hard and not fun). With these two elements combined, I’ll eventually end up with a leg hugger…… or leaner. I’ll talk about the details of those steps when…