This laser light painting setup can even control the camera. But it probably will not work with your average point-and-shoot. The exposure time used is somewhere around 2 seconds long, a feature which is hard to find on anything but DSLR cameras.

The setup relies on a red laser diode to do the painting. When viewed in real time you only see a dot tracing out a cryptic pattern and occasionally switching on and off. But with a long exposure the intense light persists to achieve an image like the one seen above. Note the ghosting around the rig as it has moved while the shutter was open.

The Arduino controlled device consists of a base which pivots the diode horizontally, with a servo for aiming on the vertical axis. Since the sketch is divided up by letter, we wonder how hard it would be to adapt this for use with a point-and-shoot? Perhaps you could capture one letter at a time and layer the frames in post production?

It seems this is a lot easier to build than some of the LED plotters we’ve looked at. If you do make your own don’t forget to send a link our way.

This pleasant-looking plant may try to take your hand off if you’re not careful. The robot flower (translated) includes sensors that cause the petals to move in reaction to external stimuli.

You can just make out the distance sensors as black rectangles on two of the petals. These let the flower track an object by rotating the flower stem. But if they determine the object is getting a bit too close for comfort, the servo motor on the back of each petal will cause the flower to suddenly clamp shut.

The video after the break starts off with an in-depth look at the hardware that went into the project. An Arduino clone called the GRoboduino makes this project a lot easier since it has a bunch of extras on the board aimed at things like sensors and servo motors. The mounting technique for the petal-powering-servos is quite attractive, and we enjoy the Snapple lid (probably not the actual brand but you get the picture) which has been coated with yellow felt for the center of the bloom. The final look is normal enough to fit in with home decor, but it still has enough geek in it to melt our hacker hearts.

[via Make]

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]

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The Starbot is a custom robot made for one of my sons. It is a star that shines and rotates to where the spectator is.

My son found this wooden star-on-a-stick somewhere and played around with it. After a while he came to me and said it would be cool if this star would shine whenever somebody comes close to it.

Bam! Here we go. This is a perfect question for a geek dad. Of course we can! So this little kid and I elaborated a bit more and out came this robot named Starbot.

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Comunikino is a box, connected to a PC which runs a script in Python.  When receiving a mail, the subject will be printed to its LCD. You can then use one of three Comunikino’s buttons to send a mail back to say “Yes”,  “No” or “Readed”  (this button can also to be used to say: “Hey! I’m thinking of you”).

The project has been developed by Eraticlux, check here the full project.

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Having one of those days where your too lazy to do anything? Have a robot doodle for you while you sit back in your favorite chair. This is a very simple drawing robot that was actually started by one of our student engineers. I just made the base plate bigger so I could add a third servo to raise and lower the pen.

My base plate is laser cut acrylic but it could easily have been a small food container, CD or a piece of wood. Just use some double sided tape or hotglue to hold it all together.

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Question: Is it possible to control this hobby servo using a PWM signal from Arduino via this optocoupler to the servo?

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Hello everybody. 

First sorry for my English but not good. I want to ask the profis about my robotics problems. :) 
I have a 2wd mobile platform. I played with this so many and my old simple codes was working well. 

But I decided, I want to upgrade a little bit my "stupid" code which was very good with the fixed ping sensor and some IR sensor but too simple. Than I rebuilded all IR sensor first, and builded a little servo for the PING sensor. 

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Webshop warehouse in Erfurt - Germany.  Boards from SeeedStudio, DFRobot etc. Solar panels, robotics, motor, servo. 

Going to buy a new Wireless Controller for your next Robotics project. Why buy a new one when you can Do-It-Yourself? All you need is an Arduino, an old Joystick with a Gameport (15-pin connector) and a pair of Series 1 xBee Modules.

The explanation of the xBee Configuration and the xBee Packet Description is very well done at the blog.

Transmitter: Joystick + xBee [No additional hardware needed]
Receiver: xBee + Arduino + [your amazing Robot, Car or a Plane!]