In his blog, Michael describes a nice 4WD robot he realized by means of an arduino-compatible board, a motor shield and a couple of XBee radios, which have been used to implement a simple and effective remote control.

Actually, the remote is made up of a standard breadboard equipped with a joystick, a couple of buttons (that can turn the robot in a Kitt-like vehicle!) and the XBee radio. One interesting feature of this project is that the remote controller is fairly simple and has been designed to work with just the XBee radio board, instead of requiring an additional MCU.

More details can be found here.

[Via: Project Lab - Nootropic design]

[Via: homepage of the workshop and Zoe Romano's blog]

This giant-size version of Operation from Brian of the Lansing Makers Network was an enormous hit at Maker Faire Detroit. The game is played just like the original and uses scaled up pieces and kitchen tongs as tweezers. An Arduino detects any false moves and reports them to a computer running a custom Processing sketch. In addition to keeping score, the sketch also keeps track of the the fastest times, peak usage, number of games played and any other information Brian, a self proclaimed data fanatic, could think of. I was a bit disappointed that the ‘scare you to death’ buzzer of the original was left out. Maybe he could work that in on the even larger version he’s building for next year?

Open Electronics‘ staff were looking for a common and standard hardware platform usable on different robots they were working on. Their goal was to find a single platform that had to provide power supply to the microcontroller, it had to provide stabilized voltage for the servos, and, finally, it had to be equipped with an obstacle detector and with an IR receiver.

Having chosen Arduino as the target core board, they developed an ad-hoc shield meeting all these requirements, whose detailed description can be found here, together with the BOM and a lot of source code.

[Via: Open Electronics]

ArduSat, which stands for “Arduino satellite”, is a recently kickstarted project that aims at developing an open platform usable to emulate space scientists:

Once launched, the ArduSat will be the first open platform allowing the general public to design and run their own space-based applications, games and experiments, steer the onboard cameras to take pictures on-demand, and even broadcast personalized messages back to Earth.

ArduSat will be equipped with several sensors (such as cameras, gyros, accelerometers, GPS and more) packed inside a small cube (the side will be approximately 10 cm long) that can be accessed through a set of Arduinos.

Once in orbit, the ArduSat will be accessible from the ground to flash the required firmware for the experiments and for getting back all the collected information. People interested in performing space experiments will have access to a ground replica of ArduSat explotable to test and debug their code before the actual deployment.

The project is very ambitious, and it is expected that such an open accessible space platform will have a considerable impact on how simple space experiments will be carried out in the forthcoming years, in the case of fundraising success.

You may find the Kickstarter page of the project here.

[Via: Hack A Day and Kickstarter]

In his blog, Marc from Robot Dialogs presents a very nice hack involving a IBM Selectric II typewriter: by means of an Arduino board and several solenoids, the typewriter can be successfully connected to a computer to emulate a vintage teletype.

The complete story can be found here, together with several videos about its development.

[Via: Hack A Day]

Researchers from Centro de Automática y Robótica (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid) and from Brown University carried out a very deep research about the specific behavior of bat flight, whose ultimate goal is to replicate the capabilities of bat’s wings by means of an ad-hoc designed micro aerial vehicle (MAV).

From the home page of the project:

[...] this research is oriented towards the development of a biological inspired bat robot platform, that allows to reproduce the amazing maneuverability of these flying mammals. The highly maneuverability is achieved by reproducing the flapping and morphing capabilities of their wing-skeleton structure. This structure is composed by several joints and a membrane that generates the required lift forces to fly.

To mimmic the muscular system that moves the joints of the wing-bones, Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) NiTi wires are used as artificial-muscles. Several challenges in controlling this SMA-based actuation system are regarded in this research.

A lot of research work has already been carried out (see here for a list of publications) and a bat-like MAV prototype has been designed and implemented to both evaluate and validate the research outcomes. Among the other stuff, the core onboard electronic is made up of an arduino-based board, an IMU, a radio transceiver and a rechargeable LiPo battery.

More details on this project can be found here.

[Via: BaTboT project homepage]

Touché is a capacitive-sensing technology, developed by Walt Disney Research, which aims at providing touch and gesture sensitivity to a great variety of objects. From this research paper:

The technology is  scalable, i.e., the same sensor is equally effective for a pencil, a doorknob, a mobile phone or a table. Gesture recognition also scales with objects: a Touché enhanced doorknob can capture the configuration of fingers touching it, while a table can track the posture of the entire user.

In this instructable, Dustin Andrews shows how to make a custom Arduino board, equipped with a lcd, a buzzer and a solid enclosure. Dustin’s goal has been to design a rugged Arduino version, that can be employed “as is” in many practical project, in place of a less solid breadboard-based solution.

The project is released under Creative Commons CC-BY license.

[Via: Instructables]

I am proud to announce the final show for the Physical Prototyping course at the BA in Interaction Design at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmo University, Sweden. This year our students got to work under the brief “Mean Machines” and a whole series of seriously nasty objects were produced as a result. There is a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see these objects in action by coming to K3 on Friday March 23rd between 11.00 and 18.00. There will be a guided tour at 17.00, don’t miss it!

As an example, here a picture of the All-In-A-Row keyboard, trying to slow down the typing experience to the maximum:

(c) 2012 by its authors, All In A Row Keyboard

I love the way Tony Olsson, the course’s instructor, introduces the final show:

As always its not officially spring until the bachelor students at the Interaction Design program in Malmö present their final exhibition for the Physical Prototyping 1 class. At this one day only event the student will introduce you to some rude, anti social, annoying and politically incorrect technology made with a whole lot of love.
So head over to Malmö University’s School of Arts and Communication (K3) on the 23rd of March.

The exhibition will open at 11.00 and at 17.00 there will be a guided tour where you will have the chance to meet up with the students behind these mean creations. The exhibition closes officially at 18.00 and then the unofficial party will start and move from K3 to continue elsewhere through the night.

You can find K3 on this map.

As a side note, Tony is also known for being behind the Open Softwear book.