open cv

noodleFeet

noodleFeet : All Wired and Ready

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 : Proof of Concept

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…