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Building an Open Source 3DOF Palletizing Robot Part 7: Training Software

Arm3 robot trainer is coming along. There were several false starts until I figured out the right way to get Swing and OpenGL to play nice together in Java.

In this proof-of-concept the real machine moves to match the virtual model. The robot already understands Inverse Kinematics so there are two ways to drive the machine: the first is to move along XYZ lines and the IK system figures out how to match your request. The second is to move the motors directly. A trainer can use either one or both at once.

Next step is to record & play back sessions. Once that’s been achieved people can share training sessions with each other online – remix, tweak, collaborate, use github, and so on.

I’m looking for resellers and people who are interested in using this robot to solving real world problems. I’m also getting ready for the San Mateo Maker Faire & MakerCon. Will I see you there? We should meet up and talk shop.

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What do you get if you put two Makelangelos together? Something like this.

Today I got a call from Mike with some questions about the Makelangelo. He mentioned David Bynoe’s Four Cable Drawing Machine (above). David has been making amazing art in Calgary, Canada, for some time now. Looking through his other videos I realized I’ve talked to David anonymously in other message boards. Small world, hey? Hi, David! Love your work.

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GCodeSender v1, the Better Arduino Serial Window

GCodeSender has been updated from v0 to v1.

The arduino serial window is great if all you want to do is send a few lines of text. GCodeSender started as a tool to send whole files of instructions, one line at a time. All the Arduino has to do is send “>” (without the quotes) to signal that it is ready for the next line.

I’ve just added a new command line and a send button so that it more closely matches the Arduino Serial Window. Think of it as “Arduino Serial Window++”.

Anyone care to add a history of recent commands sent? That would save a lot of typing.

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Building an Open Source 3DOF Palletizing Robot Part 6: Assembly Instructions

Thanks to Solidworks for donating a copy of their software to the Vancouver Hack Space! I’ve been using the program to model all my parts and now I’ve learned to make exploded diagrams of assemblies and sub-assemblies.

Read all the instructions here

I think that’s a wrap! No hardware revisions for at least 6 months because I want to build community and get this machine into schools. From here out it’s software, new tools to go on the finger, and demos of what this thing can do and is good for.

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Building an Open Source 3DOF Palletizing Robot Part 5

I spent the day spring cleaning, so I didn’t get a lot of time to work on the 3DOF robot arm. Today I added a better model of the robot to the software: OpenGL lighting, bounding cylinders, and bounding boxes. I’ll use these same bounding shapes for detecting collisions in the software before the robot runs. That way I won’t be able to program the robot to do something that would cause it to harm itself. Respect the Third Law of Robotics!

Tomorrow I will add the bearings that arrived, both to the robot and to the bearings category in the shop.

Special thanks to Peter for introducing me to TTT a system that might help me teach the Makelangelo and the Arm to write more beautifully. Check out Peter’s hexapod! He’s tackled a number of issues the same way I did, independently, and done a beter job of blogging his results. Great minds think alike?