Society of Robots - Robot Forum
General Misc => Misc => Topic started by: vidam on February 01, 2008, 01:52:30 PM
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Does anyone know of famous mini-robots of our time or in the last decade. A mini-robot is about the size of 1000 cubic centimeters. That is .001 cubic meters or 1,000,000 cubic millimeters converted into other units. I can't think of any famous robots off the top of my head. I did a google search and could not find anything else except people's home/school based lego robot projects.
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Not sure if this is what you're looking for:
http://www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2001/minirobot.htm (http://www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2001/minirobot.htm)
(http://www.sandia.gov/media/NewsRel/NR2001/images/jpg/microrobot2.jpg)
http://lsro.epfl.ch/page66048.html (http://lsro.epfl.ch/page66048.html)
(http://lsro.epfl.ch/webdav/site/lsro/shared/HPR/MICROROB/Mobile/MiCRoN_robots_all.png)
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ants/ (http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ants/)
(http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/ants/fingrant-50.jpg)
http://poor-robot.com/pico/ (http://poor-robot.com/pico/)
(http://poor-robot.com/images/bot_dime_3.jpg)
http://www.robots-dreams.com/2008/01/micromouse-shri.html (http://www.robots-dreams.com/2008/01/micromouse-shri.html)
(http://www.robots-dreams.com/DSC00007.jpg)
http://www.robots-dreams.com/2006/03/leave_it_to_the.html (http://www.robots-dreams.com/2006/03/leave_it_to_the.html)
(http://www.robots-dreams.com/Image01135.jpg)
http://www.robots-dreams.com/2007/10/wheres-the-robo.html (http://www.robots-dreams.com/2007/10/wheres-the-robo.html)
(http://www.robots-dreams.com/DSC04587.jpg)
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those are too cool! ;D
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Del,
I knew about the MIT ants, Sandia mini-robot but not the others you list.
Alice is pretty small too but more like a micro-robot than a mini-robot.
http://asl.epfl.ch/index.html?content=research/systems/Alice/alice.php
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I also knew about these pico and micro bots. There is another I have found a few years ago that I never managed to build. You will see it below, but here is the link to the builders page: http://chanhak.com.ne.kr/ (http://chanhak.com.ne.kr/)
Here are the Pearl micro robots:
(http://chanhak.com.ne.kr/sum01bot_5.jpg)
(http://chanhak.com.ne.kr/pearl2-2.jpg)
(http://chanhak.com.ne.kr/pearl2002-3.JPG)
And Peace micro robot:
(http://chanhak.com.ne.kr/peace2.jpg)
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does that one with the green batterys have suspension?
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The wheels assembly rotates around the motor axle and acts as suspension. This approach however introduces extra friction on the motor axle when turning. But because the robot is tiny, this doesn't matter greatly. As you can see in the first picture, the wheels assembly is made out of plastic, which acts as a low friction bushing and the bushing part is wide enough. In the next pictures, the wheels assembly is made out of some fiberglass or something similar, probably from a PCB board without the copper. The bushing part is narrow, which creates problems when turning.
I really like the tightness of the board and the miniaturisation, but still using regular parts, not SMD parts. The motors are driven directly by the PIC microcontroller, not through an Bridge circuit. Pretty hard to find motors that will not draw more than 20MA. I think these motors can be found in old Mac floppy drives.
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why are tracks so commin
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because you need 4 wheels. and 4 motors will take up too much room and battery life. so they connect the wheels together and it makes tracks. and it's cooler
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just an FYI, at the microscale such as on these robots, tracks are even MORE inefficient (than larger robots, tanks, etc) due to scaling laws . . .
I think they use tracks just because its mechanically simpler that way to synchronize the wheels. Gears would be more efficient, but complicates the assembly . . .