We had the pleasure to be part on the first portuguese TEDxKids!! We brought our Farrusco’s tribe for a brief introduction to robotics during the afternoon, what a great time!! Big thanks to all the TEDxKids team for the opportunity and support!! This kind of events should happen more often!
There will be a TV show dedicated to the event this Saturday and Sunday @ SICNoticias
http://imagensdemarca.sapo.pt/emissoes/tv/pecas/promo-pequenos-grandes-oradores/
We are preparing a new Farrusco’s batch, keep tuned because soon there will be plenty of tutorials, addons and other goodies.
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
Rui Horta was invited to run a day called “Hoje Quem Manda Sou Eu” @ Pavilhão do Conhecimento, this was a day full of digital art, interactive installations and creative robotics.
I exposed ICU and two Farrusco’s:
What a great day!!! :)
This is the new version of Farrusco, tomorrow we will build a bunch of them at the workshop, and you will be able to build your own very soon.. We are planning more future workshops! ;)
Say hello Farrusco!! :)
I wanted to keep working with the XBee modules, and I thought it would be cool to control Farrusco.
So, first I used 2 potenciometers and assigned one to each motor.. and then I used a nunchuck controller.
Both require a learning curve and it’s only after a while that you start to feel the touch :]
This is the code I´m using to control the robot with the Nunchuck
While coding new interactivity into this robot and trying to achieve better control on the way it moved, I thought it would be cool to see what happened if I mounted one little servo to hold a pen and asked it to write ‘LMR’ – the initials of the website: www.letsmakerobots.com
The idea came from this challenge… and I thought I could give it a shot.
The result was far from what I expected.
The pen was not centered on the chassis.. the correct position for the pen should be exactly between the wheels..
At the same time, it was nice to see this little creature drawing lines on its own :)
This is what could be drawn if the pen was centered.
I have a lot of difficulty keeping right angles everytime I move on to the next letter.. :)
I think that the great improvement here was that I’ve made a plan of what I wanted to build and looked after solutions before the assemble process. So, this one came out a more successful robot!!
This is my first real approach of avoiding obstacles and navigation programming and I’ve had a lot of fun with it! Nevertheless, the values that return from the sensor fluctuate a little and I need to work on it!
