Farrusco, Your First Robot

Farrusco, Your First Robot

Farrusco is a small robot based on the Arduino platform, in this case, is using a Motoruino wich is inspired on the Arduino but with a couple of enhancements – dc motor dual controller, servo and sensor plugs.

With Farrusco you will be able to make it avoid obstacles, follow walls, enter in free space mode, and in the future more add-ons will be available, just to name a few: line follower, speakers and light sensors, RGB leds, and so on.

This robot is intended to:
– enthusiasts wishing to enter in the creative computing and robotics fields but don’t know where to start;
– engineering and physical computing students who need a development platform;
– digital artists and designers;
– students of all grades;
– be a simple toy.



More information @ guibot.pt/farrusco

Zezinho, the poser

This is Zezinho, a humanoid robot that likes to pose! :)

All the microservo supports where made with the amazing material Polymorph.

For now he is being controlled by 8 analog inputs, each input controls one microservo. In the future (as I hope) he will be controlled by a computer vision system where he will try copy real human poses in real time.
I’m still programming servo control functions and movements presets.


This is the analog inputs setup and a custom servo shield.

I’m using an Arduino Mega because I need more than 6 analog inputs that the regular Arduino boards have and I don’t have the time (or should I say patience) to digg around multiplexers.. I’m very lucky to have the support of InMotion.pt, they sent me the Arduino Mega for the first test drive. Thank you so much Filipe!! ;)

This robot will also be my final project for the course ‘O Som do Pensamento’. It will be an instalation where the user will be able to control his poses with physical controllers. I’ve made a controller box in acrylic and will post photos as soon as I have it with me.

Playing with movements and poses.

Testing movements and different servo speeds.

________________________________________________________________
Update (21.08.09)
Other posts related to Zezinho:

Experimental video made for OddBot robot competition:
http://lab.guilhermemartins.net/zezinho-meets-el-sapatero/

Zezinho, the Poser interactive installation:
http://lab.guilhermemartins.net/zezinho-the-poser-installation/

Filtering servo movements:
http://lab.guilhermemartins.net/filtering-servo-movements/