Hello and a Question from a Mega Newbie

[TechnoBill]

Hi All,
I have purchased but not yet received my Bioloid, should be here any day now.
Just wanted to say hi. I am hoping to be able to contribute to the list at some point.

While waiting for my kit, I have been sucking up all the info I can find.. I stumbled across this link: ( http://www.nimbro.net/robots.html ). About 2/3 of the way down the page; Its a Bioloid with improved autonomy using a PDA Brain and a camera.
I was curious if anybody has any more info or has tried replacing the controller with a PDA. I assume they are polling and controlling the servos directly.

Hehe I havent even got mine yet and already dreaming that I will outgrow the controller and need to totally take over the controller for something more advanced

Cheers
BillyD

[Pev]

Hi All,
I have purchased but not yet received my Bioloid, should be here any day now.
Just wanted to say hi. I am hoping to be able to contribute to the list at some point.

While waiting for my kit, I have been sucking up all the info I can find.. I stumbled across this link: ( http://www.nimbro.net/robots.html ). About 2/3 of the way down the page; Its a Bioloid with improved autonomy using a PDA Brain and a camera.
I was curious if anybody has any more info or has tried replacing the controller with a PDA. I assume they are polling and controlling the servos directly.

Hehe I havent even got mine yet and already dreaming that I will outgrow the controller and need to totally take over the controller for something more advanced

Cheers
BillyD

Hi,

Welcome, and I hope your Bioloid arrives soon for you. I haven't tried the total replacing of the CM5 processor but have hooked up a bluetooth interface to allow remote control and processing.
Also saw that the Robotis people now list an SD to Dynamixel interface for PDA use so that may help simplify the PDA interface Piece. Its on their new english website

http://www.robotis.com

Under the Robot Controller section towards the bottom. Says its due for release Nov 2007 so is still a way off.

Anyway good luck with your new Bioloid and good luck with your quest for more processing power

Pev

[limor]

Hi TechnoBill,

Welcome to the forum!

Nimro and other RoboCup humanoid teams use Robotis servos because they are they provide the best actuators on the market for humanoid research, allowing the researcher to focus on control rather than on mechanics. Check out the publications by the humanoid league perticipants: http://www.humanoidsoccer.org/teams.html

I wouldn't recommend replacing the CM5 because it has a 16mhz Atmega128 and the circuitry to deal with the high-voltage and amps of the servos. However, you could augment the capabilities of the robot control by relaying some of the control functions to an on-board 400mhz Gumstix or to a remote PC over cable or bluetooth.

We are currently experimenting relaying 19 servos position, torque, speed and temperature, over a 115kbps serial line to a PC.

We expect to show shortly a fixed-rate control loop at over 200hz and latency of less than 1ms when the PC is running Windows XP.

This should be sufficient to do closed-loop control of the Bioloid from the PC.

[TechnoBill]

Thanks for your responses.
The kit should be here any day now.
I am sure I wont need the PDA at this stage. Being new to robotics and stumbling across a few articles on the PDA and camera, it was more an enquiry about future possibilities. My background is software development so I was thinking about future multitasking and processing options.

I look forward to puting together some beasties and neat behavior.. but I am determined to start at the beginning to ensure I get a good grounding (I will not build a Huminoid on day one, I will not build a huminoid on day one... )

[jaho434]

Why not?!!? I did

[Pev]

Have to smile I said the same thing, then built the humanoid, then broke it down and built 2 x hexapods, then a simplied humanoid and now have my kit as the 18 DOF humanoid. That is the great thing with the Bioloid, its whatever you want it to be!!!!

Enjoy

[smoothchat]

I have heaps of experiment ideas for the humanoid so it would be real hard for me to start off with just the Parking Gate... Well, maybe just to test that the CM-5 works before I assemble the humanoid

I've taken the plunge along with TechnoBill and we are both waiting for the arrival of our 18+1 (Hybrid) kits.

TechnoBill and I have our roots in the PET and Vic-20 and 6502 assembler. Playing with low byte/high byte 16 bit values is very nostalgic.

Hurry up Mr Postman !!

[TechnoBill]

Yay! My Kit Has Turned up.
Now. I hibernate for a little while while I suss out the basics before asking all the dumb Questions and then reading the manual other way around hehe.

[Pev]

Enjoy!!!!

[SK]

While team Nimbro apparently has a Bioloid, this robot wasn´t used at RoboCup. Humanoid Team Humboldt used a Bioloid in the competitions.
It´s probably worth a try to write a short mail to both teams at nimbro(at)informatik.uni-freiburg.de and info(at)humanoidteamhumboldt.de and ask them about their experience.

[TechnoBill]

I think I was overly enthusiastic in regards to the PDA.
Now that I have my Bioloid and have run some tests to get an idea of the number of instructions per second I can issue I am quite happy.

I will probably want to Revisit the PDA once I have the robot dancing and kicking up a storm. I will want to fit him with a camera and let him see himself in the mirror and become self aware

Thanks for the suggestion though.