Introducing Mini Maxwell

26 Jun 2011 maxwell  robots  ros  While I am a strong proponent of low-cost, human-scale mobile manipulators, I also realize it's impractical for everyone to be playing with such large robots. Earlier this year I designed a small robot using an iRobot Create, some custom ABS, a Kinect, and an AX-12 based arm and neck. This small mobile manipulation platform had no name for some time, but every time I showed it to people they exclaimed "Oh! A mini version of Maxwell!". And so, this robot got the name "Mini Maxwell".


There are now about half a dozen Mini Maxes running around across the United States. As our software development is starting to calm down, I thought I would take a moment to showcase a few of the robot's features.

As you probably have guessed, this robot runs ROS (on a netbook). We're using an ArbotiX to control the arm and neck servos (7 AX-12s total), while the Create base connects directly to the netbook. Two demo buttons are attached through the ArbotiX allowing users to quickly add user input to programs.


The arm has 4 degrees of freedom, losing the wrist roll found in Maxwell. A single servo gripper is installed, although a more sophisticated one is in the works:


I demoed Mini Max earlier this week at the HBRC meeting, showing how we can easily move around toy blocks. I've posted a number of tutorials and other documentation on the ROS wiki as well.

Navigation with Maxwell

29 Apr 2011 maxwell  robots  ros  Earlier today I gave a brief talk about our robotics program in the College-wide showcase. In preparing the talk I recorded a small video of Maxwell navigating, under voice control. This demo uses the ROS pocketsphinx wrappers that I previously developed to send a set of predefined waypoints to the move_base node:



I'm going to try and post some updates from RoboGames tonight (as usual, about 2-4 weeks after the event....)

National Robotics Week, Day 6 - Stanford Robot Block Party

21 Apr 2011 national-robotics-week  robots  Unfortunately, there was a small delay in me posting anything from out on the West Coast. This was for two reasons:

1. The Internet connection at the hotel kinda sucked, this seems to be a recurring theme this month.
2. I was out far too late most nights with the Mech Warfare crowd.

I did manage to make it to the Stanford Robot Block Party this year. Maxwell did as well. At least in pieces. The battery strap broke during shipment (into about 6 pieces), requiring Maxwell be opened up for repairs:


Overall the sliding battery didn't do much damage, breaking only the charge connector and yanking a few wires. It took about 25 minutes to correct things and then Maxwell took a tour around the facility.

We set up with the Home Brew Robotics Club guys, and next to Pi Robot:

(Photo from Palo Alto Patch article)