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Thu, 28 Jan 2010
RoboPatriots humanoid soccer players for RoboCup using Surveyor SVS Blackfin -
The Autonomous Robotics Laboratory of George Mason University has fielded a team, RoboPatriots, for the RoboCup humanoid league, a prestigious international autonomous robotic soccer competition. RoboPatriots is one of only two teams from the USA that competed in the RoboCup humanoid league in 2009 (of 24 teams overall). The team is small and has never received any outside funding, so one of their goals is to present an inexpensive and robust robot platform that still competes well. In comparison, their competitor's robots generally cost 4-5 times as much.
As the team prepares for next year's competition in Singapore, they are developing tools for humanoid motion and path planning, vision-based localization, and multiple-robot coordination, as well as physical simulation software. The Surveyor SVS (stereo vision system) has proven to be a critical part of their robot architecture, acting as the brains and eyes of the robots.
2010 Robot Specs:
- Team Name: RoboPatriots (Johnny 5, Newton, and Stephanie)
- Height: 53 cm
- Weight: 900 grams
- DOF: 18 (5 DOF per leg, 3 DOF per arm, 2 DOF neck)
- Motors: Arms and Legs (16): Kondo KRS-2555HV digital servos
- Motors: Neck (2): Kondo KRS-788HV ICS Digital Servos
- Computing Unit: RCB-4 from Kondo
- Camera: Surveyor SVS stereo vision system, 640x480 resolution per camera, two 500 MHz Blackfin processors
- Sensors: (1) RAS-2 dual-axis accelerometer from Kondo (2) KRG-3 single axis gyro from Kondo
- Walking Speed: 25 cm/s
Posted Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:40 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...
Mon, 18 Jan 2010Inertia Labs introduces Renegade SRV all-terrain robot -
Our manufacturing partner Inertia Labs has just introduced an up-scale version of the original SRV-1 Blackfin robot, intended for larger payloads and outdoor operation, but still based on SRV-1 Blackfin and SVS control electronics. The Renegade SRV employs four high-quality planetary gear motors with encoders to directly drive the five inch rock crawling wheels. The chassis is laser cut and bent .125" 6061 aircraft aluminum with an ABS impact plastic lid. Surveyor has designed a custom speed controller for this chassis that also takes the input from each motor encoder and direct support for Sharp IR range sensors.
Technical details and order information are found here - Renegade SRV.
Posted Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:25 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...
Sat, 16 Jan 2010New blob tracking display feature added to SRV-1 Blackfin firmware -
Don't know why we didn't add this sooner, but latest version of SRV-1 firmware now includes a display function for blob tracking results. The console command 'g6#' enables display of boxes outlining the results of vblob() function, where '#' is the color bin for the blob search, e.g. g63 displays the blobs matching color bin #3. 'gx' turns off the blob overlay.
Forum discussion is found here.
Posted Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:32 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...
Mon, 04 Jan 2010Large treaded robot with SRV-1 Blackfin controller -
Inertia Labs has developed a upscale version of the SRV-1 Blackfin robot with a beautifully integrated camera tilt mechanism. Other than the larger motor controllers, this is basically a standard SRV-1 controller setup. For more information, contact Inertia Labs
Posted Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:50 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...