Robotics/PastMeetups

18th February

• Salman and Drew joined, both software focused, Salman has good OpenCL knowledge and Drew wants to help out with building the ROS model and looking into hooking up the kinect.
• With Salman on-board decided to replace the HSRDP brain with an Odroid XU or Arndale Octo, eight core arm board with OpenCL
• Abby brought in GlaDOS printed parts, not strictly a robotics project but fun. He left some of the parts in the robotics box these need to be filled, sanded, painted and possibly glossed. Later on would be great to get a basic IK model maybe together with web interface.

11th February

• Cleaned out the robotics area downstairs in preparation for casting on the 25th

4th February

• HSRDP bot has a new milestone! Be a bartending robot at the EMF camp in end of August 2014, 6.5 months remaining

21th January

Turns out the AGM lead acid batteries didn't respond to charging that well afterall, will need to seek a replacement

7th January 2014

We now have the 2 12V 55AH batteries, sulfated but responding to charing relatively well. Stephen has taken them home to recondition them!

17th December 2013

We've not managed to get the concrete base in time before xmas so the work will need to be done after we come back on the new year.

Also not meeting next week as it's xmas so lets resume in the new year (7th of Jan!) Merry Christmas and Happy new year!

26th November

• Next steps for CNC/Robotics area (http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/CNC_Robotics_area)
  • Test if we can use the weld anything to the safe so we can use it as a base
  • Safe is not suitable as skin is too thin, then concrete, it will lift up.
  • Design/build welded metal base
  • Source/make a worktop
  • Can we agree the final location ?
• Stuff going on:
  • Staubli
    • Gripper fitted, being integrated with ROS-Industrial, controller side (v+) done, need to change the industrial_robot_client nodes to use the serial instead of network
    • We need to trace the Digital IO lines out of the controller, to find out where they connect to the arm. They either use the D connector on the back of the controller, or go in to the umbilical. Once we have found the IO lines, Jon can connect the gipper, so it responds to OPEN & CLOSE commands.
    • Cable housings designed (printed?) Printer i.I was planning to use dead now :(
  • HSRDP
    • Need to do some metal surgery on the chassis
    • Need to complete the brain for the bot, the laptop that was meant to be running it is misbehaving, maybe use a uATX/ITX board?
    • Need to sort out how we can power it.

12th November

• Next steps for CNC/Robotics area
  • Started clearing it out: http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/CNC_Robotics_area
  • Need to agree on layout, communicate to the rest of hackspace and start sourcing materials
  • Try and find a suitable base for the arm. Look into using the safe as a base.
• Stuff going on:
  • Staubli
    • Ian and Paddy working on a hotend for the staubli
    • Jon got a new gripper, working on an adaptopter plate
    • Mantas designed a housing for the robot arm cable
  • HSRDP
    • Stephen and Tom have made a controller for the mobile base - Are now modifying the L298 bridge board to accept high (>24V) supply voltages.
    • Eugene got a laptop to use as a the brain as pi can not handle kinect data at all.
    • Paddy having machined the sterering rod, will be trimming the mobile base and adding the motor mounting, possibly with some welding.

5th November

Jon fitted a gripper on the Staubli arm.

Eugene managed to talked to the Staubli's serial ports (was an IO error, of the human kind) now I'll continue work on the ROS-Industrial integration and look into writing a g-code interpreter (for CNCing and and 3d printing)

Paddy and Mantas have a design for the cable housings, now it's mainly a matter of printing it.

Ian is working on an extruder and feeder using the end effector frame that we have.

Luis wants to work on own version of the 3 finger griper, so maybe talk to Mantas as he was rather interested in that!

Eugene measured the dimensions of the safe, it's 58.5cm x 61cm x 78cm so it's marginally higher than table level (~72) which is fine. Eugene will ask the rest of HS about he plan and we need to ascertain if we can weld a fixing plate to it to which an arm can be bolted to, then it's a matter of getting a single piece of worktop (wood?) that's big enough.

29th October

Drew Noakes speaking about RoboCup

I'm a robotics enthusiast who's building a team of autonomous humanoid robots to play soccer. These robots compete in annual RoboCup World Cup events against nearly 30 teams from every corner of the globe.

Working with the University of Hertfordshire, we've a small team of humans and a medium team of robots. RoboCup has taken us all over the world, most recently to Holland. Next year's world cup will be in Brazil, and before then we'll probably attend either the German Open, the Iran Open, or both.

In the Kid Size Humanoid League our platform is the DARwIn-OP robot. They are around 45 cm tall with 20 degrees of freedom (ie. motors -- and pretty awesome motors at that) and house a fit-PC (we run Ubuntu Server) with a dedicated sub-controller to interface with most of the hardware.

We run our own software which includes computer vision, probabilistic environment/agent models, gait generation for locomotion, forward/inverse kinematics and lots of other things. I'll run a demo one evening next week for anyone who's interested and go into as much detail as there's appetite for.

15th October

Sorry I cant be there - Jon.

Stuff to do:

• Map out the arrangement of the robotics/cnc area
  • I sent through my thoughts. Bottom line is as big and as flat as possible. :-) Ideally somewhere where it wont get piles of crap put on it... It would be perfect if we culd eventually build a perpex cage around it so we can run it as full speed.

• • I think being flat is very important. IMHO, there's no point having a sub millimeter accurate robot, using a mogul field table top ? I had imagined covering whatever we build in either a sheet of metal / perspex, or using a thick smooth coated kitchen worktop type thing ?

• Discuss robotics group slush fund
• Staubli
  • Whats happening with buying a replacement battery for the Staubli. Anything I can do to help?
  • Shall we create a wiki page with example V+ programs we run that work and dont crash the arm in to something.
  • Transplant the end effector on the smaller robot arm to the bigger one
    • I've heard back from RobotIQ. Their "2 Finger Gripper 85" is £3,600 :-) (http://robotiq.com/en/products/industrial-robot-gripper) A bit out of our price range. I've asked if they would consider donating one. They have offered a factory reconditioned second hand one for £1,700. Probably still out of our reach... ?
    • I have ordered a "Large Robot Gripper" to play with and will donate it.(http://www.robotshop.com/large-robot-gripper.html I'll bring it in once it arrives. I want to play with force sensors on the gripping surfaces.
• Hack/Fix our roomba?
  • How often to meet?

Wednesday 2nd October 2013: Kick off!

mindmap of the introduction