Vibrobots (and bristlebots) are simple robots that use a tiny pager / cellphone vibrator motor (with an eccentric weight) to randomly bounce around -- they are the subject of many Maker / DIY projects as well as some well-known commercial toys (such as the $7.00 Hexbug Nano).  Naghi Sotoudeh, a Hizook reader from Iran, contacted us about his latest project: a remote controlled micro-scale vibrobot (measuring just 18 x 12 x 10 mm) that uses two vibrator motors to achieve steerable motion without any wheels.  Naghi's design is similar to some previous steerable vibrobots (eg. the Harvard Kilobot project), but the vibrator motor arrangement gives his design a nice, distinctive faux-wheel look.  The hardware is fairly simple: a small PCB, two vibrator motors, a microcontroller, an infrared photodiode, and a very small battery.  In general, the software for this type of robot isn't too bad either.  In short, this could be a great DIY project and potentially a nice mass-market product.  What do you think...  Would you fork over your hard-earned money for a RC vibrobot kit or pre-built RC vibrobot? 

ICRA 2011 kicks off in less than two weeks in Shanghai, China.  Unfortunately, I won't be attending -- I'll have to wait to see y'all at IROS 2011 in San Francisco come September.  However, I was browsing through the program and it looks like there are going to be a lot of great talks! A few that caught my eye: Morgan Quigley's low-cost 7 degree-of-freedom (7-DoF) series elastic actuator (SEA) arm for sub-$5k, Aaron Dollar's helicopter-mounted shape deposition manufacturing (SDM) hand,  and Rollin' Justin's fast reflexes to catch flying (tossed) balls... and these are just the talks that have videos posted online already (embedded below).  Eventually I'll get around to writing about all this cool research (after finishing my dissertation in a few months!) -- but for the time being, here's a quick scatter-shot overview.

Perhaps you remember Garratt Gallagher -- he's the ROS / Kinect hacker responsible for 30% of all entries in the recent Kinect / ROS 3D competition, in which he  won first place for Impromptu Buttons (his other entries such as Finger Detection, People Follower, Kinect Minority Report Interface, etc. were also quite impressive).  However  I want to introduce you to his most exciting project to date:  Bilibot.  Started in December and funded with $5,500 through KickStarter, the Bilibot Project is an open source effort to create an affordable robotics platform based on the iRobot Create, Kinect, and a computer pre-installed and pre-configured with Ubuntu and ROS.   The goal is to create a platform for hackers, enthusiasts, and researchers that works right out of the box without the (often daunting) challenge of installing and configuring Ubuntu and ROS.  Frankly, the $150 Kinect may be popular in the gaming industry, but it will completely revolutionize robotics -- it is an amazing sensor, and the Bilibot project aims to make it even more accessible. 

Dr. Aaron Dollar of Yale's GRAB Lab was recently awarded the prestigious "MIT Tech Review 2010 Young Innovators Under 35" award, better known as TR35, for his work on building flexible robot hands through shape deposition manufacturing (SDM).  The SDM process allows multiple materials to be integrated into a single mechanism, including soft finger pads, compliant joints, rigid members, sensors, and even tubes to run wires and cables.  In fact, this is the same / similar process by which the Meka Robotics H2 Hand (eg. on Simon) is constructed.  Anyway, this is a promising trend for robotics research; TR35 seems to consistently recognise the contributions of top roboticists, such as Andrea Thomaz (2009), Andrew Ng (2008), Robert Wood (2008), Josh Bongard (2007), etc. Congratulations Aaron!

Following up on last week's article about building robot hands with compliant under-actuated fingers, I'd like to examine a technique to build aesthetic shells for robot heads using a combination of 3D-printed master forms, silicone molds, and quick-setting plastic final products.  The technique examined was used by MIT alum Cory Kidd to build 18 prototypes of the Autom weight-loss coach for his PhD dissertation, a product that is being continuously refined at Cory's new startup, Intuitive Automata.  This technique seems a bit involved; I probably would have just outsourced a full 3D printed ABS version of the head, especially since there were 18 of them.  However, I always find these advanced robot fabrication techniques enlightening.

Building capable robot end effectors, particularly high-complexity hands, can be a daunting challenge.  In this article, we will examine the fabrication of a robot hand with compliant, under-actuated fingers that is rugged enough to bounce back from twisting, end-on and side impacts, falls, collisions, and even severe back-bending.  The specific fabrication process explored is akin to shape deposition manufacturing using materials such as resins (epoxy / Delrin) and urethanes (a "rubbery" substance) of various durometer (hardness).  This particular technique was used to build early hand prototypes for MIT's Nexi (or MDS) robot from the Personal Robotics Group, and further refinements resulted in the Meka Robotics H2 Compliant Hands, as seen on the Simon robot.    Read on for details and pictures -- this should be of interest to robotics hobbyists and professionals alike.