Alberto Bietti's blog

The Uno - a segway motorcycle

2008-04-29T18:30:00.001+02:00

This is just awesome: a motorcycle which looks like a one-wheeled one (actually, it's two wheels next to each other).

Balancing things are really being the next thing, from segways to all the balancing bots I see those days.

By the way, I am planning to do a project on a balancing bot at the robotics club I created in my high school, either with the Lego NXT (although we don't have a gyro - yet - but we'll try with distance or light sensors), or custom made, in which case we can use my Parallax accelerometer (probably with Arduino?). I'll let you know about the project as soon as possible on my projects blog.

iPhone piano app: real multitouch! (the power of Hackers)

2008-02-17T20:08:00.001+01:00

I recently ran across this post on Synthopia, about the iAno app for jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch. I don't have an iPhone/iTouch (yet), so I didn't try it, but although it look pretty useless (only one octave on the screen at a time), there's something that impressed when I watched the video: you can press up do 5 keys at the same time!

I heard before that the multitouch screen used in the iPhone/iPod Touch could only support up to 2 fingers simultaneously (in software), but this shows that the awesome hacking community behind all the jailbreaks and unlocks managed to hack the screen too! I wish I had an iPhone so I could try to use the non-official sdk and do some cool stuff with it, or even try to dig into the system and figure out how they hacked the box... Maybe there's some hope I'll get one sometime sooner or later :-|

Anyways, I'm pretty sure the famous SDK that Apple should be releasing this month won't allow developers to create applications using this kind of technology (that 'super-multitouch' which looks more like the videos I used to be dazzled by, bluetooth and wifi connectivity, location etc.). This is what bugs me most about Apple: they want users to be closed in a perfect world, where no one can come in and mess stuff up. But locking cool technology like that to keep security will never make the device more exciting. Hobbyists like me aren't able to mess around with such a cool device, and it's a shame. If I had an iPhone, I would totally use it to make a bool robotics platform, or some little games to have fun with. Fortunately, the hacking and the open source communities are always there to make the world a better place.

That is why I'm excited about Android, Google new mobile operating system, which is completely open, and which has an excellent SDK, allowing the use of some very innovative APIs, such as the location one, which can tell an application where the phone is located in the world, at any moment.

I am indeed working on a project for an Android-based Robotics platform, with some guys from SoR (Society of Robots) and I am discovering the SDK, which is very well made.

For more on Android, see here. (I love the slogan "All applications are created equal" :D )

Wiimote+Roomba=Wiimba !

2008-01-27T12:17:00.001+01:00

This guy made a cool wiimote + roomba hack: instead of controlling the roomba with the wiimote's acceleration, as usual hacks do, he added a sensor bar to the roomba, and used the combination as a vacuum cleaner, where the wiimote is the handle. When he twists the wiimote, the roomba turns.
Even though it turns a revolutionary autonomous device into an old-style vacuum cleaner, the hack is a good one!

Arduino Audio - DAC options

2008-01-10T13:59:00.000+01:00

uC Hobby has recently released a new article on Arduino sound, this time using DAC instead of simple on-off toggling (as they did in the previous articles).
This allows you to make more complex waves, such as sine waves or triangle waves, and you can generate more sophisticated sounds, and play polyphonic melodies.

This is definitely going to be a big help for my sound experimenting stuff (for example making better sine wavish sound to my Arduino Theremin, or improving my Propeller piano and allow it to play more than only one note at a time).

I can't wait for more great articles on sound generation! It's fun stuff!

Interview with Johnny Lee

2008-01-09T12:48:00.000+01:00

Hacked Gadgets has an interesting interview with Johnny Lee, the creator of the coolest Wiimote hacks I've ever seen. He talks about the time finds for hobbies, the link between his field of study/research and his personal projects, about his choice of Computer Engineering rather than just Electrical Engineering or Computer Science (I actually like this choice too, since I love both EE and CS, but don't only want to do just one of them. I love the interplay of hardware and software - that's where my passion for robotics and all this human-computer interaction stuff comes from :p) and a bunch of other things.

Check it out here.

Yet another Johnny Lee wiimote trick: Virtual Reality desktop

2007-12-22T00:37:00.000+01:00

Now that he's shown us many new ways to use the wiimote, he uses the wiimote in practice, to make a virtual reality environment on a screen, by just having the IR sensor bar on your head. It's, again, awesome!
From hackaday:

If you thought [Johnny Lee] was done making us all buy Wiimotes, you were wrong. Now he's back showing off a simple, but incredibly effective VR head tracker. He swapped out the LED's on a pair of LED light safety glasses with a set of IR LEDs and used his PC/Wiimote combo to do the work. The demo is just fantastic. As usual, you can download the software from his project page.

And here's a video:

Stupid Facebook spam chain...

2007-12-18T21:45:00.001+01:00

On my special msn messenger email (an old hotmail account), I've got all of these 'frigtard' italian friends (more or less) who spend their Internet time forwarding dumb chains, talking about the worst stupidity on earth, especially for the ones about making you pay for hotmail. I mean, come on! It was completely losing the battle against gmail and yahoo, how could it be worth any money? (I actually like the improvements they're making with the windows live stuff, and I'm learning to like Microsoft for this and other things)

Now facebook is finally taking some of this stuff away from my mailbox with the funwall application: people send videos, messages and similar chains to all their friends. And I just got the following message:

Attention all Facebook membeRs.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you're active please send
to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.
Founder of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg

Wow! Now we also get 'private' messages from Zuckerberg! And what a cool language, what a great marketing strategy! Delete your users! Of course, that's totally logical. Well, it is for this girl who sent that in and believed this stupid actor... It's sad for her, and for me who get spammy shit like that.

STOP SENDING STUPID CHAINS!

Violin playing robot

2007-12-11T13:23:00.000+01:00

It's incredible, amazing, WOW, but is this really useful?
Here's the video of a Violin playing robot made by Toyota:

Violin playing robot: Why is it important?

Another awesome Johnny Lee wiimote interaction trick!

2007-12-10T20:00:00.000+01:00

Yes, he did it again! Johnny Chung Lee, human computer interaction PhD student at CMU (that department at CMU rocks!) just showed a new wiimote trick, allowing the user to use a simple pen with an LED to draw on a projected (or not) screen or use it as a mouse. He places the wiimote away from the screen, and the infrared camera sees the LED when it turns on (i.e. when it touches the screen), and knows the position (you have to calibrate it first). Pretty awesome...

Here's the video:

Check his website (the software is available) [from hackaday]

And here was his other trick (uses fingers)

balancing robots: wow!

2007-12-08T18:51:00.001+01:00

I've recently seen two awesome (I mean really awesome) balancing robots: a simple one, and a human-sized humanoid robot which can take kicks and completely keep his balance, made by a Japanese team.

Here's the first one, which I found on the sparkfun home page:

And the other one (from shlashdot, this post). Here's a link to the video.

Twitter LED Matrix DIY gadget

2007-12-08T15:26:00.001+01:00

While reading the MAKE Magazine feeds, I ran across a very cool project: an LED Matrix connected to an Arduino showing twitter updates from a computer (it uses Processing).

Here's a video:

It's definitely going to help me in my LED Matrix experimentation: I just received the 8x8 dual color led matrix I ordered at Sparkfun. I think I'm going to use the Propeller because I need 22 pins (to use 2 color (red/green) or even 3 when both red and green leds are on) and multiprocessing is useful for this kind of things. And I thought I could do a kind of labytinth game with my memsic accelerometer.

And here's the LED matrix I have:

I'll post on Al and Tech when I get something done.

Twitter LED Scroller Build Log

Bill Triggs - "Machine Learning in Vision" video lectures

2007-12-03T22:22:00.000+01:00

One of the guys from my team SYR project, Yves Gufflet just sent a message on our google group about these video lectures on Machine Learning in Vision, by Bill Triggs, his Boss at INRIA, in Grenoble, France.

He's quite famous among Computer Vision researchers, and even though I didn't finish to watch these lectures, it looks very interesting.

You can find these lectures here.

AIBO gets another shot at life, thanks to Wiimotes (Engadget)

2007-11-18T16:45:00.001+01:00

AIBO gets another shot at life, thanks to Wiimotes - Engadget

It's incredible how many hacks are wiimote hacks! In this one, the user has two wiimotes + nunchucks (wiimotes in the hands, and nunchuks strapped to the biceps) and the AIBO moves its front legs with the same movement as the user's arms. Pretty cool!

And here is a video of this "WiiAIBO", in two different races:

Boarduino+Nunchuk+Servo Todbot project

2007-11-17T13:08:00.000+01:00

I just found this awesome project by the Arduino-expert Todbot, where he used this info (code to make Arduino get Nunchuk data) to make a sort of arrow-balancing thing (kinda weird name, but that's all I could think about as a name) where a plastic arrow attached to a servo always points upward by following the nunchuk accelerometer data:

Here's the post, with a video, too!

wiimote multitouch-like interaction

2007-11-11T14:04:00.001+01:00

I found this awesome post through hackaday in my RSS feeds.

It's basically a way to use the wiimote infrared camera to track your finger's position in space. To do that, the fingers reflect the IR light coming from an IR led array, which stands right next to the wiimote.

The PC application they show in the video looks a lot like the various UI seen in the 'famous' multitouch screens videos from TED talks, Microsoft Surface or any random video on youtube.

Here's the video:

The new SRV-1 looks cool!

2007-11-06T14:58:00.001+01:00

I recently went on the surveyor website to check the new robot they were making, and it really looks cool and powerful! Next gift? I'd love that, but first I need a new laptop...

Anyway, the new SRV-1 robot is a lot more powerful than the previous one: it is powered by an Analog Devices Blackfin BF537 processor (500MHz vs the old 60MHz ARM7), an awesome 1.3 megapixel camera, and WLAN 802.11b/g!!

It looks like an awesome development platform, for a not too high price. Onboard, you can program it in C, or change the firmware, but the great thing is that is supports any kind of PC-based environment, from Microsoft Robotics studio and RoboRealm to Webots! And since the communication is fast enough with WiFi, the computer can definitely access camera data fast enough to allow you to program accurate vision algorithms, and advanced AI which run on you PC, or even onboard. I think it's a very good platform for MSRS, and I would probably use it mostly with MSRS, and it has a great potential. And it's also internet controlled, so that you could access it from anywhere in the world, like our SYR! Pretty cool, huh?

Good work, surveyor!

DARPA Urban Gran Challenge intro

2007-10-14T20:14:00.001+02:00

There's an article on cnet news.com "On the road to robot race" which introduces various teams that will compete in the semi-finals of the Urban Grand Challenge, from October 26 through October 31 at Victorville, California. The final will take place on November 3rd.

Trossen Robotics PC based robotics tutorials

2007-10-13T21:32:00.000+02:00

I found a good resource for PC based robotics at Trossen Robotics. They have some nice tutorials about what's called bridgeware (ie, a way of connecting electronics to a computer via USB or serial port, allowing to develop programs in advanced languages for computer, communicating with electronics components, sensors, motor controllers, etc.), and other stuff. Phidgets is, I think, the best company for this kind of products.
Here's the bridgeware introduction video:

It's definitely a good way to make PC based robots, either using simply normal programming environments (C++, Java, or .NET), but also a way to use Microsoft Robotics Studio in a more powerful way than remote control. The point of using the power of a laptop is that it allows you to do advanced algorithms for Vision, Speech Recognition and AI, which I'm really looking forward to do.

If I had the money, I would love to use a kinda old laptop I have as a PC based robot, using MSRS and those Phidgets stuff, but for the moment, the mechanics needed are pretty expensive, and I would need huge batteries, motors etc. Maybe one day...

Hotkeys

2007-07-22T20:45:00.001+02:00

Looking at lifehacker RSS feeds in google reader, I found this cool article, with lots of cool keyboard shortcuts "to boost your productivity"

There it is:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/20/developers-alarm-200-hotkeys-to-boost-your-productivity/

2007-07-22T07:02:00.001+02:00

Steve Wozniak at PC World

2007-07-22T04:42:00.001+02:00

I was reading this interview with Steve Wozniak (Apple's co-founder with Steve Jobs), and found that he also has an interest in robotics, but in a pessimistic way...

At first, he talks about his engineering life at Apple, and about what he did afterwards. An engineer and an inventor!

Then, when the interviewer comes to robotics, he says that he thinks Artificial intelligence is impossible...

We will never ever have artificial intelligence
He says that a robot will never be able to make a cup of coffee, because we humans needed years and years of learning in order to be able to do this kind of things...

Why does he have to be so pessimistic? what he says is against all the research that is being made! The understanding of the human brain is just a way to get this method of having a similar intelligence! We look to the future!
I'm saying this because I'm really interested in the field of robotics, and especially in Artificial Intelligence, that's why I don't totally agree with his pessimism...

But I still admire Steve Wozniak, all his engineering works that allowed the world to have computers today!

There is the article:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,134826-pg,1/article.html

My first music video on youtube: Chopin Fantasie op. 49

2007-04-01T13:59:00.000+02:00

Here I am, playing Chopin's Fantasie op. 49 at home.

Part I:

Link

Part II:

Link

My BRAT: 2nd step - demo sequence programs

2007-03-11T18:17:00.000+01:00

After configuring the SSC-32 servo controller on SEQ, I finally tried to make the robot move using the demo sequence programs provided by Lynxmotion.

Here is a video of the 'kick' sequence, where my BaRATtolo kicks a tea box

(Here is a link)

Stay tuned for next steps (my own sequences first, then making the BRAT independent with the Atom Bot Board and BASIC Atom Pro microcontroller, and other sensors)!

My BRAT: 1st step - BRAT assembled!

2007-03-11T15:33:00.000+01:00

A person came from Boston, MA here, and brought my BRAT, so that I finally have it!!
I started 'playing' with it yesterday and finished this morning the first part of it: mounting it and adding the SSC-32. It still isn't configured on the SEQ, which I'll do soon.

Here is a video I took of it

(here is a link)

Thanks Lynxmotion!!!

Robosapien video

2007-01-14T14:45:00.000+01:00

I recently found this video about robots and their future. It's really interesting and it explains what robots are going to be able to do in the next years.

The end is, in my opinion, one of the most interesting: it talks about computer-brain communication (yep: neural system and electronic devices speak the same language: electricity). They show a man who can't speak controlling a computer with his brain, and also a 'remote controlled' mouse, whose brain is connected to a computer that tells him how to react to what it sees. Very interesting!!!

Here is the video (it's long and long to charge... but it's worth the time!)

Lynxmotion CH3-R videos

2006-12-30T16:42:00.000+01:00

The CH3-R, provided by Lynxmotion (see http://www.lynxmotion.com/Category.aspx?CategoryID=101) is a round hexapod walking robot.

Jim from Lynxmotion recently uploaded some cool videos on youtube: here he is in action.

There is more available at youtube: tags: lynxmotion hexapod walking robot
or look at Jim's account: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=robots7

bNXT blog

2006-12-30T16:32:00.000+01:00

bNXT is a blog like others (nxtbot.com ...), but it has some special sections, like the tutorials and papers about mindstorms NXT.

The paper on Alpha Rex obstacle avoidance is very interesting and important for a good programming of it. It allows you to make more complicated programs than the ones shown in the editor, and it also introduces the programming technique of absraction, which is very important.
There is a reference to the 'Advanced robotics with the Toddler' (by parallax), which is available in pdf (at http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/books/edu/toddler.pdf ) and explains better the toddler programming technique with abstraction.

This paper is available at http://www.bnxt.com/paper/alpharex_avoid_obstacle

roborealm

2006-11-19T17:25:00.000+01:00

Roborealm is a robotic machines vision program that can detect objects with a webcam thanks to different kinds of filters, like color filters, or blob filters. These help recognizing objects according to their colors or shapes.

Look at their tutorials for a first approach to machine vision, or look at the SYR Project's guy's explanation of SYR's vision (in French) at: http://yves.gufflet.free.fr/SYR/Filtrage.htm

Shadow robotic hand

2006-11-19T16:47:00.000+01:00

That is a cool robotic hand, which can be controlled through the 'CyberGlove'.

Fingers are described this way by Shadow site:

The Finger Unit reproduces as closely as possible the four degrees-of-freedom of the human finger

The movement is guaranteed by the air muscles (40):

For more info, visit their website at: http://www.shadowrobot.com/

Hitec Robonova-1

2006-11-12T15:24:00.000+01:00

Robonova-1 is a Robo-one like humanoid, very cool!!
It is very powerful:
-16 HSR-8498HB digital servos, made for the Robonova-1 specifically (a lot of DOF!!)
-powerful control board with ATmega processor

you've just got to see him in action!!! he likes gym a lot!!

look at these videos:

BRAT (by Lynxmotion)

2006-11-12T00:25:00.000+01:00

BRAT is an entry level biped robot, recently made by lynxmotion:
http://www.lynxmotion.com/Category.aspx?CategoryID=97
Here are a few videos of it from youtube:

blog created!!

2006-11-11T23:05:00.000+01:00

Welcome to my blog. I will talk about my stuff: robots, programming, projects, cool links or info...

enjoy