Bioloid - Another Robot?

[JavaRN]

Sorry to post yet another "is bioloid for me?" post under a different heading, but I think that my case might be a little different from the other post.

I am a happy Robonova owner, and I think I did quite some interesting projects with it, and also added loads of staff to it - 4 IR sensors, tilt sensor, Tilt and pan mechanism, 5-dof hands (including grippers) and also speech output (SP03), also I managed to cotrol my robonova using the Java language through the use of bluetooth module by sparkfun.

Recently my wife offered me to buy me a Bioloid Comprehensive kit as a present for Christmas, but I had to say "no" for the time being because I don't have enough time to experiment with it. However since the offer is still there (may be for Easter!!! ) this made me think about the Bioloid kit and I have some questions to ask:

1. The sensors (Sharp ir) I've used with robonova can they be used with the bioloid kit? What about the SPO3 module? I also read somewhere that you can use sparfun's bluetooth and connect it to Bioloid quite easily.

2. How is the walking gait for Bioloid humaniod? One of the thigs I really want is to have a humaniod that can walk in a straight line - something which I tried with my Robonova but I didn't quite get.

3. I read that the battery only lasts for 10-20 mins when using the Humanoid. Is there an alternative battery pack? (not Li poly please)

4. One final thing. I am a complete newbie in electronics (I know almost nothing except that V=IxR ), but I am quite experienced in programming - especially in Java. I read that you can program the bioloid kit using C (my third preference after Java and C#). Are there any tutorials to get you started in programming the Bioloid Kit in C - SDK documentation how to read motor positions and move them and get sensor's data, etc.

Sorry for the long post, but I had to do it to explain my concern. Thanks for any help you people may give me.

Charles

[kennethw]

I am a newbie, but I have a few bits of information that might help.

2. How is the walking gait for Bioloid humaniod?

http://robosavvy.com/Builders/Pev/18DOF.wmv

3. I read that the battery only lasts for 10-20 mins when using the Humanoid. Is there an alternative battery pack? (not Li poly please)

Not sure about batteries, but you can run the Bioloid with the charger cable attached (it's switch mode). I'm a bit spooked by Li-po myself.

4. Are there any tutorials to get you started in programming the Bioloid Kit in C - SDK documentation how to read motor positions and move them and get sensor's data, etc.

There's a lot of code included with the kit, for different configurations. There are also additional manuals for the AX-12 and the AX-S1 specifically. You can get the manuals in the sidebar for the Robosavvy site.

[limor]

The Bioloid servos are controlled by a single bus that all the servos are sitting on. The servos are all slaves and the master is the CM5, an Arduino or a Gumstix. The RN1 controller board has analog interfaces so you can plug in the IR sensor. The Bioloid's CM5 doesn't although it comes with a module that looks like a servo but has several sensors called AX-S1 (read this page).
If you want to attach additional sensors you need a board that can talk the AX12 bus protocol. For example, Jon Hyland's sensor boards or even an Arduino (see http://robosavvy.com/store).

For more links please check out the Bioloid wiki and feel free to add stuff to the wiki throughout your Bioloid study.