Comments on: Disappointing Robo-Bug

By: Tony D.

Tony D. — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 08:01:06 +0000

The only thing I wanted to do with mine was to locate low current pulses on the PCB that I could use to trigger AMT LEDS. These firing under the plastic “wings” would make it more interesting on my office floor after dark. Too much work is my excuse for not having pursued it, yet.

By: Joel Grant

Joel Grant — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:43:08 +0000

I wish that I had seen this website BEFORE buying one of these. I had left robotics for about two years to pursue astronomy. I would occasionaly glance at SERVO magazine when Night sky or ASTRONOMY were not available. When I saw the ad for the Hexbug (and @ $10.) I thought” Hey…maybe I should get back into robotics!). I think I hear one of telescopes calling me.

By: Keith Neufeld

Keith Neufeld — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 14:46:00 +0000

Thomas, it should be fairly easy to add a down-facing optoreflector for cliff avoidance. If you have in mind simply keeping the current back-and-left behavior, you could probably add a tiny daughterboard and wire it in parallel with the existing whiskers. If you’re thinking of building a new board entirely to house a microcontroller, it’d be even easier to integrate.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 01:40:52 +0000

I was wondering if there was a way to hack or modify it to make it aware of edges. That one feature would make it a much better product in my opinion. As is it is a glorified 1 function RC toy that uses clapping instead of a remote to make to go back and to the left (or right which ever).

I am not skill with the electronics, but that one feature (cliff avoidance) would be good.

By: Keith Neufeld

Keith Neufeld — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:15:54 +0000

Matt, Neil, you hit on a good point when you reference the amazing engineering that went into making some of these things run off a single motor, and I thought about expressing appreciation for that in my post.

Heck, I can’t even visualize the behavior of the connecting rods in this bug; I have to trace it out step by step, waving my hands in the air and looking daft. I remember bump-and-back cars from my childhood with a single front wheel whose axle had one end mounted on a pivot and one end loose, so the idler wheel would swing from straight to turning when the car backed up. Whoever first thought that up was, in my opinion, a genius.

I never had a Furby, but I vaguely remember that robotics hackers were sorely disappointed when they opened it up and found far fewer motors than they expected. I think the whole thing ran off a single motor and an astonishingly clever set of cams. That meant that programming new behaviors into it relied on running the motor back and forth through a particular range of motion to trigger the cam back and forth, rather than individually controlling separate motors as they had hoped.

By: Neil A Benson

Neil A Benson — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:00:30 +0000

25 or so years ago, RS had a robotic arm. It had up/down; rotate CW/CCW; clasp; an elbow; and a wrist that could also rotate. It also had exactly one motor!! I was, and still am, in awe of the designer(s) who conceived of the gear-trains!

the_captn

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:45:49 +0000

Radio Shack fooled me several times as a kid. There was Armitron, a RS rebrand of a Tomy toy.. a fully articulable “robot” arm that ran on a single hobby motor and a masterwork of a transmission. I also had a “Robot Banker” that resembled an industrial robot arm and ran through a very convincing sequence of apparently multi-motored motions, again on a single motor. The first time I saw a description of an automaton, I immediately recognized what I had, but it wasn’t until later that I truly appreciated the cleverness of the engineers who created these things.

As for the bug, it might make an interesting BEAM subject, though mechanical efficiency is clearly a weak point.

By: Paul Anderson

Paul Anderson — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:05:37 +0000

I’d lean toward the latter – adding a microcontroller and hacking it to behave a little more intelligently.