New Robonova-1 Accessories

[NovaOne]

I saw a small article in botmag (Jan/Feb) about new hip joint set, grippers and stand for RN. I can find photos of the grippers and stand on http://www.hitecrobotics.com but no details about the hip joint set? Anyone know much about them? Also heard rumours of RN-2.......?

[Gort]

I saw the grippers, hip joint set and stand at the Chibotica event. I also heard rumors about RN-2. I am wondering now if it maybe a while before we see these new products. What has me thinking this is that they just cancel the 2nd Hitec Cup here in the US. It sounds like they are cutting back on expenses like most companies are doing now. So I am thinking that they are cutting back on product develop too.

[Tohm]

Here's a pick of the hip and grip upgrade. The grip upgrade is avaliable now. The hips will be shortly.

[NovaOne]

Excellent Tohm

I have to be very careful using my grippers, because without feedback it would be very easy to destroy a servo, and drain the battery quickly when stalled. I wonder if Hitec will suggest using feedback like Dirtyroboto's handshake code to deal with this?
http://robosavvy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=750&highlight=hand+shake

Also nice to see the fixes Hitec might make to the stock move code, to recify for fact that the used none exitent servos in the original move commands (I suspect they will use for the hips) to help with timing as hi-lighted by i-Bot?

I wonder if this is RN-2 or just 1.5?

[Tohm]

You can certainly use Dirtyroboto's excellent handshake code or use the limit command to stop the servos from stalling when closed.

These are just accessories which will be sold separately. Look for new things later this year though. Sorry to be vague, but I can’t say more.

[Gort]

That is good to hear. I can not wait to see what is so top secret. I have had that problem with my servo grippers too. Experiment with the object in the grippers too see how much to close them. Try to strike a balance between too tight or too lose. I also do not keep the object in the grippers for long, so as to not to smoke the servo. I made that mistake once and my servo got very hot.

[zupa]

Grippers and hip joint looks very interesting. Gonna give a try as soon as hip joint is available.

[DirtyRoboto]

My first set of home built grippers were based around using the spring of the metal I was using so that even on a fully closed position the servo was not loaded too much.

I would look at doing a position check every +10 servo positions until the deflection of the servo position is at least -5 from where it should be. At this point I would knock a few points off of the servo position so that a positive grip is maintained but with lower stress on the servo.

Also please understand that some of the leg servos are under constant load and this is normal. The servos are load rated for constant duty.

DR.