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Could a robot ride a skateboard

Yesterday, I was practicing with a skateboard and wondering about something. Do people know enough to program a computer, with a motion system attached to it, to ride a skateboard?

This seems to be a far more difficult task than, say, a CNC metalworking machine. In the CNC application, all that matters is that the axes are moved precisely according to a pre-programmed sequence. In the skateboarding application, precision also matters, but it needs to react to the real time balancing situation.

To somewhat simplify this, could a robot ride a skateboard on a surface that is well known to the robot (no need to recognize the surface from vision sensors).

I was at a toy show in Rosemont last summer, and they had some enthusiast club show off "Linux robots". Those robots were physically fighting each other, in a very funny way. They looked like one year old kids as far as their ability to move and balance was concerned.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus20906
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Damage to their tailbones and skulls is much easier to repair than on humans, who should know better if they're over, say, 20....

Reply to
Mark F

The answer is yes. For $2500 he can be yours.

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Reply to
anorton

I am shocked. Wow

Reply to
Ignoramus20906

The inverted pendulum problem:

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jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

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Im IMPRESSED!!!

I am the Sword of my Family and the Shield of my Nation. If sent, I will crush everything you have built, burn everything you love, and kill every one of you. (Hebrew quote)

Reply to
Gunner Asch

I am speechless...

Reply to
Ignoramus20906

The assembly manual (!) 7 meg

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This is fascinating...

Reply to
CaveLamb

I think this qualifies as "on topic". See him exercise (without his skin)...

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Reply to
CaveLamb

Segway style balance detector, some drives and a small computer to tie it all together.

Maybe Im too old..or too young. When I see good engineering of this nature ..it gives me the warm and fuzzies.

We do indeed..."Live in Interesting times".

Gunner

I am the Sword of my Family and the Shield of my Nation. If sent, I will crush everything you have built, burn everything you love, and kill every one of you. (Hebrew quote)

Reply to
Gunner Asch

Very cool, and very cute - you can't help but smile - but not very complicated given the power of today's microcontrollers and the simplicity of today's accelerometers.

But it IS very cool.

Reply to
rangerssuck

After seeing these posts I was ready to be impressed, but the one that got me was a video of "Murata Boy" riding a bicycle down a flat balance beam almost exactly the width of the bicycle's tires.

Starts at about 1:35 here:

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Jay Ts

Reply to
Jay Ts

As a second thought, this robot is not really balancing, everything is slow enough to be completely predictable. I am not quite as awed by it as I was on my first look.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus20906

Sounds like they belong on the Terrorist list. Fundamentalist idiots like that are a menace to Mankind. Good thing Christ gave us the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes.

Why do you hate Jesus?

mike

Reply to
m II

Hate Jesus? Why would I?

Im Buddhist

Gunner

I am the Sword of my Family and the Shield of my Nation. If sent, I will crush everything you have built, burn everything you love, and kill every one of you. (Hebrew quote)

Reply to
Gunner Asch

e

Oh, I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were actually balancing, but the algorithm isn't so terribly complex. In very broad strokes:

If accelerometer detects tilt to leff then lean to right if accelerometer detects tilt to right then lean to left etc. with forward & back.

Add some PID, and you're done. Then you can add in the leg kicks and arm waving as separate functions, and the main balancing loop will, well, balance.

There are autopiliot model helicopters that do this - I saw one on youtube that also has GPS, so you can fly it far away and push a button and it will come back to you. Again, this is very cool stuff, but with today's tools, not so very difficult to implement.

A bunch of high school kids made a segway clone a couple of years ago.

But still, it's fun to watch.

Reply to
rangerssuck

On Tue, 31 Aug 2010 09:19:31 -0500, Ignoramus20906 scribed:

Check out this Big Dog... Pretty F'ing cool!

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Fred III

Reply to
Phred

No you aren't.

Reply to
rangerssuck

I think you are right. This is from the site Roboporium:

"Plen is a small desktop toy humanoid robot that can replicate complex human movements. It is controlled remotely by use of a Bluetooth enabled phone. When programmed, it is able to use a skateboard, rollerskates, pick up, kick and throw small things, and stand up if he tumbles to the floor. It doesn't feature any sensors or automatic software reactions to certain events, as it's entirely remote-controlled."

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However, they do have more advanced robots with gyros and accelerometers.
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Reply to
anorton

If it were that easy, I wouldn't have a full-time job.

Then try to get it working under all the circumstances that your customers expect it to, run into problems that you can't figure out because you slept through your control theory classes in school, and call me!

The Segway is just a lot more cool when Dean Kamen is talking about it.

Reply to
Tim Wescott

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