i’ve made progress on the path smoother.  it takes a path made from a few points and converts it into a smoothed path (using cubic curves) and waypoints along that smoothed path with times and velocities associated with the waypoints.  the waypoints are all the same distance from each other in time.  the roundedness of the curves is adjustable as it the acceleration profile.  in some cases the path comes up a little short - due to inaccuracies in guessing when to start slowing down.  in any case good enough for now.  my test images are kinda fun so i thought i’d pass those along.

-trebor

a good one.

Don’t let the dead air fool ya, we’re working our little orbs off behind the scenes. We’re too busy to post! Some stats courtesy our Subversion code management software: we’re averaging 10 file changes per day. When you keep in mind we’re only a few days into August (last bar on the graph) the trend is clear.

Hey orbsters,

whiling away a slow afternoon stuck inside, daydreaming about rolling robots?  well, now you can all gaze at the juicy bits, without needing a big fancy CAD program!  Rotate, zoom,  selectively hide parts for a better view, the orb is your oyster!

I put an edrawing of the current whole orb assembly here-

http://svn.lee.org/swarm/trunk/mechanical/v0_7/integrated.EASM
(local copy)
which you can view with the free utility here-

http://www.edrawingsviewer.com/pages/products/eDrawingsViewerpage.html
(local copy)

they’ve even got a Mac version-

http://www.edrawingsviewer.com/MAC_Viewer.html

(sorry, linux… maybe VMware?)

This is great for viewing, and reality checking thoughts like “I want to put a giant speaker/flame thrower/LED array/flux capacitor on the orb here.”

The one thing I’m finding it’s not so good for is importing data into a different program.  I guess I’m still looking for a really good portable format that does real parametric solid assemblies.

-mike

It was too hot to think, let alone point a camera straight, but I did get a few pictures:

The playa crew

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Geek Week camp Note 40-ft tower for the microwave link to Gerlach

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Breakfast for everyone!

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Hacking on the playa. Note specialized desert hacking gear: extra monitor, spent pyro, box of whippits (likely spent as well), sunglasses, insulated coffee mug.

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Danger Ranger’s mobile wifi rig, plus orb.

Well, after a long weekend of late nights at the shop, Mike, Ray, Niladri and I made it to the playa on the Fourth with orb in tow. Big thanks to everyone who helped us get there, and to the folks at Geek Week who let us mooch off their wifi and shade structure. (As there were record high temperatures even for the desert, the latter was likely more than a metaphorical lifesaver.) In any case, we found and fixed several problems, got in some roll-testing and data-logging, and generally had a baking good time.
More pictures and pontifications to come, but here’s a video to start with. We were really happy how smooth things were rolling. Considering the challenging environment and the last-minute addition of the “bucket handle” radome, I don’t think this qualifies as anything less than a total success. So we raise a hot can of triple-digit Tecate to everyone! Woot!

Click To Play

The group on the playa sent back some GPS telemetry off of the prototype orb. Matt converted the data to KML format. Here are the first GPS tracks of our prototype orb on the playa!

The lines are 3 GPS tracks. The image is from an image Google Earth took during Burning Man last year. Groovey! (here’s the original .kml files)

The orb has arrived on the playa, and thanks to our kind friends at Geek Week, we can blog live during our testing.

Here, Beth and Tzara from the Geek Week camp examine the orb as it meets the playa surface for the first time!

UPDATE-

We tested, and it rolls wonderfully on the playa surface! We tested Zigbee out to 500 feet with signal to spare, and we’ve got copious GPS data to crunch later. A successful test run, and we’ve still got time to screw around and experiment…

 

I thought I’d post a few images of strength and acoustic testing conducted by Lee and Tad last weekend. Silliness abounds!

Not only that, we can measure it. Here’s a plot of two axes of accelerometer data. This was generated by the Inertial Measurement Unit, talking to the daughterboard, passed through the SPU, then captured by the new logging feature of the mothernode dashboard application.

(Did you know Python has a csv module for saving exactly this kind of data? I just found that and it sure made it easy. Three lines of code, people!)

This data shows me gently turning the IMU from side to side, then waving it around.

Full-court press (or should that be “roll”) this weekend for orb test in the desert next week. Come on down and help! We’ll be at the boxshop getting in the way of the Flaming Lotus Girls.

Lisa, Michael and I have been working on building more orbs. Lisa and I have been working on an aluminum orb with all the welds on the inside; we set it down next to the one with the welds on the outside and there was no question which shows off the cool lines of the orb better. Welding the inside is a tiny bit harder than the outside but totally worth it.

We set up and tacked hemisphere #3 (of 12) in place on Sunday on the jig. Yesterday I threw a few hours at the welds. Today I’m going to finish up the orb. Tonight Lisa and I will put hemisphere #4 on the jig. :-)

I welded until I ran out of argon for the TIG last night so I’ll be filling that up today.

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On a side note, the Box Shop has been abuzz with activity. The Serpent Mother has been being polished up for her trip to the Fire Arts Festival and then Robodock. She’s got to fit in a 40′ shipping container for her trip to Amsterdam. That container is only 60% the size of the truck she took to Burning Man in 2006!

update 6-28-07: Steve Monahan gave me a hand last night welding the top and bottom of hemisphere 4. He’s got great technique. Hemisphere 3 still needs some love because of my crappy technique.

We are going to try and weld just the interiors of the orbs. That does a great job of preserving the clean lines. We’ll see if that makes them strong enough.

Photo: That’s Lisa doing some finish work on hemisphere #3.