Introduction

A ROS-enabled mini quadruped robot. A brand new design that is a very mini (and low-cost <$100) version of Quadruped Tsuki. It is small enough to be able to walk around on the desktop!

drawing

Hardware

Actuators

Tsuki Mini was designed using Fusion 360. He has 12 degrees of freedom.[……]

Introduction

A ROS-enabled highly-dynamic quadruped robot. A brand new design that is stronger, faster and more robust than Quadruped Kaze.

drawing

Hardware

Actuators

Tsuki was designed using Fusion 360. He has 12 degrees of freedom. 12 RDS3135 servo motors are used as actuators. The motor[……]

Introduction

A ROS-enabled heavy-load quadruped robot built with strong RDS 3135 servo motor. A simple python library is introduced for multiple servo motor control with no position feedback. This is an up-graded version of Quadruped 9G that I built one year ago.

drawing

Servo Motor Driver

A customiz[……]

Servo Motor Control Using PCA9685 and Python

September 1, 2019 Tech 2 comments

I wrote an article on ROS servo motor control two years ago, and the method was successfully applied in my previous 9g Quadruped Robot project. Later, I figured that if I don’t need servo motor pose feedback, or handling servo motor group movement in the microcontroller level, things can be much eai[……]

A Low-cost ROS Navigation Platform

January 4, 2018 Tech 2 comments tech

A low-cost ROS navigation platform equipped with:
* Odroid XU4 ~$80
* YD Lidar ~$80
* STM32 base board ~$40
* Battery ~$20
* Chassis with 2xDC motor with encoder ~$30

Github repo:
https://github.com/zlingkang/rover_robot

drawing

With lidar:
drawing

drawing

Joystick control

Hector SLAM test

[……]

Build a Smart Servo [step 1]: Circuit, Torque Sensing and PID Control

November 18, 2016 Tech No comments

Circuit

Bomlist:

The servo I use is RDS3128 (28kgcm torque, 8V voltage, $20).
The DC motor driver is MC33926 from Pololu ($17).
And the MCU is an Arduino with Atmega32u4 on it(same configuration as Arduino Leonardo but smaller and cheaper $5)

I desoldered the original circuit board in the[……]

Build a Smart Servo [step 0]: Basic Ideas

November 18, 2016 Tech No comments

Basic idea

The basic idea is to build a smart servo like Dynamixel, which is expensive and has more features than regular RC servos of course.
First of all let’s compare the regular RC servos and smart servos like Dynamixel.

Smart servo:
- Internal structure: MCU, DC motor driver, angle sensor[……]

inspiRED Leg Upgrade [step 4]: Run, Forrest, Run!

October 7, 2016 Tech No comments

Previous posts:

This is [step 4] for the leg upgrade in my[……]

inspiRED Leg Upgrade [step 3]: Leg V3.0 with Collision Problems Fixed

September 29, 2016 Tech No comments

Previous posts:

This is [step 3] for the leg upgrade in my inspiRED humanoid bipedal robot project.

The basic idea to solve the[……]

inspiRED Leg Upgrade [step 2]: Leg V2.0 with New Shock Absorber

September 29, 2016 Tech 1 comment

Previous posts:
* inspiRED Leg Upgrade [step 0]: Fusion360 model
* inspiRED Leg Upgrade [step 1]: Laser Cutting Parts

I got some new longer shock absorber and designed new laser cutting parts to mount them for the leg of my humanoid bipedal robot project.

The previous shock absorber I used is ba[……]

Explorer [step 0]: Indoor ROS Self-driving Mobile Platform

September 18, 2016 Tech No comments

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This project involves building an indoor self-driving mobile platform featured with laser scanner and ROS support. Here are some important features:

The body of the robot is laser cutted Acrylic chasis. I got within $10 from China. It also comes with 2 DC motor and holes for encoder mount[……]

inspiRED Leg Upgrade [step 1]: Laser Cutting Parts

September 18, 2016 Tech 2 comments

Previous post: inspiRED Leg Upgrade [step 0]: Fusion360 model

I recently got inspiRED Leg version 1.0 ready for my humanoid bipedal robot project with some laser cutting parts designed with Fusion 360.

Here are all the old hand-crafted parts and the new laser cutting parts:

old

The white hand-cra[……]

inspiRED Leg Upgrade [step 0]: Fusion360 model

September 6, 2016 Tech 5 comments

I recently got started reworking on the leg of my inpiRED bipedal Humanoid robot project. The basic idea is to draw all the CAD files using Fusion 360 and simulate the whole thing in a simulator with physical engine.

This is the old version I have got. Some of the parts were 3d printed using the[……]

Servo Control on Odroid U3 with Arduino and ROS

August 13, 2015 Tech No comments Odroid

This article shows you how to drive a hobby servo using Odroid U3.

Upload this to your Arduino board:

/*
 * rosserial Servo Control Example
 *
 * This sketch demonstrates the control of hobby R/C servos
 * using ROS and the arduiono
 * 
 * For the full tutorial write up, visit
 * www.ros.org/wik[......]

Initial Humanoid Robot

July 27, 2015 Embedded System, Tech No comments

Initial is a 40-cm humanoid robot. Its used for testing of running ROS on single board computer, Odroid U3, which talks to a low level controller board for controlling servo motors via serial port. It is also equipped with an HD camera, and the video stream can be transported to the laptop via wifi.[……]

Play Sound and Text-to-Speech on Odroid U3

April 30, 2015 Tech No comments

After one week hacking I finally found out how to play sound or do text-to-speech on Odroid U3.

What you need to do is simply:

    su root
    adduser odroid audio

then when you typegroups odroid , you will see that the user odroid is in the audio group. Then you can play sound through the 3.5mm[……]

Set up VNC Server on Odroid U3

April 14, 2015 Tech 2 comments

This tutorial is aimed to set up the VNC server on your Odroid U3 so that you can get full access to its GUI using your laptop or desktop without using a HDMI display.

Set up:

Odroid U3:

sudo apt-get install vnc4server or sudo apt-get install tightvnc4server.
tap vncserver :1 which means open p[……]