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 Robotics / 1987
1986  |  1988
Subject: 
RE: Seeking Strategies on Humanoid Robots/Walkers
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Thu, 31 Dec 1998 14:44:33 GMT
Original-From: 
Andrew Phelps <amp5315@ritvax.isc.rit+SayNoToSpam+.edu>
Viewed: 
1636 times
  
Greetings Lego Fans -

I am seeking tips/tricks/hints on building humanoid characters with the RCX
designed for movement (2 legs, 2 arms, 1 torso, and 1 head).  Ideally, it
would be capable of mimicking at least 2 joints per limb (say, elbow and
wrist for an arm).

And, well, be able to move or walk without falling over.  Anyone made a 2
legged walker yet ?
That is likely where I will start, a sort of "At-At Scout" if you will.
(just 2 legs on a central unit that sits between the hip joints)

I should tell you what this is for:

My name is Andrew Phelps, I'm currently pursuing a Masters degree in
Information Technology at RIT. I hold two undergraduate art degrees,
including one in computer graphics. I am trying to use the Mindstorms to
build simple robots that can express human emotion and characteristics
through pre-programmed body language. (Eventually I want to build one that
performs the "Funky Tut" dance from Steve Martins SNL skit ).  I think this
is a rather fun "off" project.

To do this, and many other things, I am trying to write a parser to grab
motion information from high-end animation packages (Alias|Wavefront's Maya
and Side Effects Houdini) and use the Not Quite C (NQC) and stripped C++
versions of RCX programming to carry out a subset of that information
assuming a model that is in scale with the computer generated geometry.
This will likely be tremendously difficult and take a LOOOOONG time because
typically these packages store the current positions of the data as absolute
co-ordinates rather than relative to the last known position :(  If I can
strip everything but the rotation elements of the modelled joints I think I
can get further along with that information and allowing the robot to
perform the joint rotations (have to work up a scale where x amount of motor
time on multiplied by y speed = z rotation along whatever axis...)  Promises
to keep me out of trouble for a long time <G>

Any thoughts on a walker or anything else would be greatly appreciated.
Have a Happy New Year !!

-Andy
Rochester Institute of Tech.
http://www.rit.edu/~amp5315/




--
Did you check the web site first?: http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: Seeking Strategies on Humanoid Robots/Walkers
 
(...) I am playing with a similar project in my spare time, I have found that your first step should probably be to write a MEL script that outputs a text file with all of your rotational data (this is easier if you are not using IK, but can be done (...) (26 years ago, 31-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: toy for children or adults
 
Dave Taira schrieb in Nachricht ... (...) your (...) a (...) | (...) broken | (...) | It´s like a model railway, intended for the children, used by daddy..... Joer (26 years ago, 31-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)

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