Robotics by TK

  I tried my hand at making a Quadruped Robot; an 8-DOF one as opposed to the typical 12-DOF ones. It is still very much a WIP, but I just couldn’t wait to make a post about it. In the top most photo you can see how it is taking serial inputs from a GUI application. The application itself was made using Processing. The GIF below shows how I send the servo values using the interactive knobs and pressing the respective servo buttons. For instance, HLF would mean Hip Left Front and KLB would be Knee Left Back. So if I set the HLF knob to be of a certain value, and then press the HLF button, it will send a command to move the front left servo connected to the hip, to the desired position. The GUI establishes Serial communication with the Arduino.  Spent so many hours 3D Printing the body. (The STL files were obtained from this Instructables page ). To provide sufficient current to all my servos, I al...

Did you know that you can control your DSLR camera via command line instructions. Not me! And I wouldn’t have until I attempted this project. But that’s besides the point, this project goes beyond me simply using a DSLR camera to obtain a video feed. I used a 2-DOF pan-tilt rig powered by Arduino and the OpenCV library to track the movement of a person’s face. In a way, one could call this a rudimentary example of an animatronic head. If you move upwards, the head will tilt upwards to look at you. Almost like its gaze will follow in whichever direction you move. (Provided you remain within the frame, of course!) I tried placing several cute toys on the pan-tilt rig such as a duck or a sheep, and a ladybird. Setting up a DSLR camera for your video feed: I used a DSLR camera so that I can position the camera wherever I wanted to. In addition, you get a higher frame rate, better image quality etc… This project works with a laptop camera as well, which is what I was using at the be...