Manoi Owners, I need some advice.

[DirtyRoboto]

Do any of the Manoi owners here have other bipeds?
If so, then how does the Manoi compare?

I am reading alot of comments about the overall balance of the robot and wonder how modding the bot will effect balance. I guess you would have to code new moves for every addition of weight!

The RN1 seems much less sensitive to inaccurate zeroing, does this mean it was designed towards a begginer to intermediate person.
I also notice that there is very little support in the way of online and offline community.

BTW, I am an RN owner.

Marcus.

[tempusmaster]

Do any of the Manoi owners here have other bipeds?
If so, then how does the Manoi compare?

A MANOI AT01, Kondo KHR-1 (upgraded to the RCB-3), and a couple others. I've posted extensively about the AT01, so it probably isn't useful to repeat all that here.

I am reading alot of comments about the overall balance of the robot and wonder how modding the bot will effect balance. I guess you would have to code new moves for every addition of weight!

It depends on how extensive the mods are. It's a combination of the weight and geometry. Adding more weight at the robots COG doesn't make as much difference as adding weight far from the COG.

For example, I've added weight (additional boards and accessories) to the AT01 body and didn't have to do more than just minor adjustments to the motions. But when I added grippers to the ends of each arm the necessary motion adjustments were fairly major.

The RN1 seems much less sensitive to inaccurate zeroing, does this mean it was designed towards a begginer to intermediate person.

There are several factors at work. You're correct in assuming that the RN1 was targeted more towards the begginer to intermediate level. That doesn't mean that it isn't capable of really great performance - it is. In fact quite a few of the entries at RoboGames were RN1 based, and did very well.

Second is the relative size. The AT01 is larger and heavier, which typically makes the home position setup and alignment more critical.

Third, the effective servo resolution is much greater for the AT01 compared to the RN1 which is only 1 count/degree. You would think that more resolution would make it easier to align, but it typically works the other way around. The legs for both robots are complex linkages involving 10 servos, all of which interact. With fewer possible settings it seems to be easier to setup the RN1 comparied to the AT01.

Beyond that, the process used by the AT01 users to setup the home position consistently isn't very well documented - at least not yet.

I also notice that there is very little support in the way of online and offline community.

It's a function of how long the robot has been in the market, and how many customers there are. The international RN1 online community is very large compared to any of the alternative kits at this point.

The AT01 has been very popular in Japan, and there's a strong user community here, but that doesn't help people outside of Japan much.

BTW, I am an RN owner.

It's a good choice, with lots of potential.

[limor]

The lack of English web presence is also a result of Kyosho's insistance that until 4 weeks ago, international sales were only approved for schools, academics and researchers and in general "experienced" users rather than the noob hobbyist community that demands lots of support and may bad-mouth the kit (at least thats how Kyosho used to see it).

In my experience web presence of any product is proportional to the number American owners of the product. American culture encourages individuals to be outspoken and the Internet is the ultimate free broadcast mechanism.


As an example of the effect of internet presence in purchase decision making process, I've just gone through a painfully frustrating few weeks of selecting and buying a new livingroom DVD player. My basic requirements included playing xvid/divx files, external disk via USB port and hackable region/zone lock. There are some 20 different players that incorporate a couple of available ASICs that provide these capabilities. Before buying such a central pillar of family existance and I expect to see substantial presence on the internet. By far, the biggest non comercial google presence (300,000 entries) for a DVD player of these specs is the Phillips DVP5960 which was a big US hit last year. I found forum threads containing hundreds of posts and entire web sites dedicated to this DVD player which I ended up buying. I guestimate that 15% of the relevant information was not written by Americans.

[DirtyRoboto]

Thank you chaps for your helpful advice.
I really want to mod my RN1 in new directions, but as it is my only biped I am waiting to get another biped before going too far from the orginal RN1.

I am looking at adding more dof to RN and I guess that by building a new robot may help my understanding of how to achieve this.

Marcus.