Gold Rush's Walking Gaits

I have uploaded two videos of walking gaits that I have been working on for Gold Rush.

First up is a video of an eight step ripple gait:


This video showcases an amble gait as well as a feature that allows the robot change walking gaits on the fly:

Second Amendment OverHaulin'

I have started work on a new Mech, Gold Rush, but that does not mean Second Amendment will be retired.

An overhaul of SA's chassis is first up on the list of improvements. It will be replaced by a more traditional 'sandwich' style chassis that will have less parts and be lighter.

I want the legs to remain the same so I have created some brackets to easily adapt SA's old legs to a new chassis.

I am also in the process of designing a new turret that will be used on both SA 2 and my new mech Gold Rush.

All other components of SA will remain the same.

Introducing GoldRush A New Quad Mech

A while back I posted about joining the dark side and acquiring a set of AX-12 Dynamixel servos.

The servos are going to be used in a new quad mech for the next Mech Warfare competition.

Joining The Dark Side

Or at least that is what they call it over in the Trossen Robotics community...

I have acquired a set of 14 Dynamixel AX-12 servos by Robotis along with Bioloid Bus Interface board by HUV Robotics to allow easy PC to AX-12 bus communication.

IPMechCam Animated Cross Hair Demo

IPMechCam HUD Widgets Demo

IPMechCam Features in Progress List

Just wanted to share a list of features for IPMechCam I am currently working towards and their priorities:

• H - Camera Configuration Dialog (Change IP, username and password without needing to dig into the code)
• H - Global Widget Color (Color picker w/ preview to set color of all HUD widgets)
• L - Local Widget Color (Ability to override the global color setting for individual widgets)
• H - Save and load widget, camera and video preferences (Preferences can be saved to a text file. Preferences are loaded on program startup)
• M - Screen size scaling (Adjust the frame size and have the camera image and widgets scale accordingly)
• L - Keyboard hot keys

I have already made some progress with a color picking interface...
At the moment you can mix red, green, and blue to get your desired color. I am also planning to add a control to adjust the color alpha to hopefully allow semitransparent widgets. Having the option of text input would also be nice if a user knows what color they want.

Introducing IPMechCam

IPMechCam is a cross platform python program to display a motion jpeg stream from an IP camera. The intent is to provide a powerful, customizable and easy to use application for anyone to use in the Mech Warfare robotics competition.

By default IPMechCam will support the TRENDnet TV-IP100W camera with the option to expand support for other similar IP cameras.

The most interesting feature of IPMechCam will be its support for highly customizable HUD or Heads Up Display widgets. HUD widgets are able to display information in a visual manner over the top of IPMechCam's camera image. Information can include cross hairs to indicate targeting, sensor and control status relayed back from the mech and even indication of game status such as time remaining in the match and the current health of both you and your opponent.

IPMechCam is the first tool in a line of applications geared for the Mech Warfare robotic competition. Other tools planned include gait visualization and optimization, gait generation, pose/sequence editor and robot control interface.

Current progress can already be viewed in this thread of the Trossen Robotics community forums.