What's New in the Lab

17 Feb 2010 3d-printing  arbotix  robots  It's been a busy month, and the lack of updates here is a testament to that. Over the past month, Vanadium has released two new products, and has another on the way. The MINI RoboController has been on shelves for a few weeks at Trossen, and the ArbotiX Commander should be in stock later this week.

We also purchased a MakerBot, which is now up and running. This little guy will be producing robot parts soon, as I have a number of projects on the backlog that I want to get going.

As for that product on the way: how about controlling some RX-64 servos with your ArbotiX? You'll be able to do just that with our new RX-Bridge, a little add-on board for the ArbotiX that converts it from an AX-12 controller, to an RX-series controller (and EX-106's too).

Lastly, we've been hard at working testing, and the V1.1 release of PyPose/NUKE is just around the corner. Should be out very shortly, with a number of improvements and bug-fixes. Unfortunately, mammal-style IK will be held over until v1.2.

Get Your IK On

03 Jan 2010 arbotix  robots  The Nearly Universal Kinematics Engine (NUKE) is finally out in a first beta. Right now our templates only support 3DOF Lizard-legged 4 and 6 leg robots, however 3DOF Mammal-style leg support isn't far off, and low DOF Biped support is in the works. This is the same system that powered Issy, Roz, and Jeff to take the top 3 spots at CNRG's Walker Challenge. It takes about 20-30 minutes to setup your bot once you get the hang of what's going on.



NUKE is written in Python, and it exports a C/C++ Arduino project that runs on the ArbotiX. NUKE can be downloaded from GitHub. Documentation is also on that site.

We also have a new google group for support (it's very new, hence the low traffic) http://groups.google.com/group/robocontroller Update: this group is pretty much inactive, visit the Trossen Robotics Forums.

Coming Soon: NUKE, and other ramblings....

17 Dec 2009 dynamixel  robots  It's been a bit quiet here, but that means stuff is getting done. NUKE: the Nearly Universal Kinematics Engine under development throughout this fall is nearing release -- a beta version should be out this weekend! This is the same software that powered all 3 of the winners of CNRG's Walker Challenge.

As we approach release, I've been adding a number of things into my code. Most people have probably noticed that I've putting a voltage divider circuit onto an analog port to measure the battery level (LiPOs don't like low voltage levels...). Up at CNRG, I had a bit of "duh, why didn't I think of that" moment when Jon Hylands suggested using the AX-12's onboard voltage measurement. So, without further ado, here's a snippet of code from Jon that will save your LiPOs (it's also at the startup of the default NUKE sketch):

float voltage = (ax12GetRegister (1, AX_PRESENT_VOLTAGE, 1)) / 10.0;
Serial.print ("System Voltage: ");
Serial.print (voltage);
Serial.println (" volts.");
if (voltage < 10.0)
    while(1);

If you are running this code at startup, you'll want at least a 1000ms delay beforehand, or you won't get a real voltage reading.