

Someone Made A Flexpicker Industrial Robot Out of Legos - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2009/09/15/someone-made-a-flexpicker-out-of-legos-nutty-video/

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HeyLaughingBoy
Open Source Robotics would rely on having access to lathes, milling machines,
electronics equipment, etc. that most interested people don't have.

There are cottage industries of hobbyists that will supply the electronics and
sensors at very reasonable cost, but the high cost items are always the
mechanical bits.

The thing with hobby robotics is that it's very easy to build something
simple; the problem is once you go beyond a little rugrat robot that scurries
around the living room avoiding obstacles and annoying the cat, the next stage
requires vastly more resources and a lot of commitment.

 _My_ personal problem is that I have the resources (lots of tools and misc.
electromechanical hardware in my "lab"); I just don't have the time to build
something I would think of as "cool."

Having a day job where I write code for complex moving mechanisms takes away
from the "cool factor" of anything I have time to do at home :-(

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replicatorblog
Beyond the cool factor of the robot itself, the article makes a great point
about the need for something more advanced than Lego Mindstorms, but practical
for an enthusiastic hobbyist.

The author uses an analog to the App store, but Linux is probably a better
reference. Are there open source possibilities for robotics?

How would you frame it? People could work on sub components? Do you have a
RoboFair to show off what has been built? Have a more participatory kind of
BattleBots event?

In any case it is a cool opportunity to have intelligent roboticists have an
outlet for their work that is more additive than the YouTube video that will
be passed around tech blogs and ultimately forgotten.

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nazgulnarsil
yes, but they all cost way more than mindstorms.

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CrLf
Pretty impressive. I don't know who to praise, if the people that do these
amazing things or the people that design lego mindstorm parts in the first
place...

BTW, although those japanese humanoid robots that run, climb stairs and
whatnot are much more complex, I find the FlexPicker robot much more
impressive. I wonder why...

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modeless
The muffin-sorting robot sorts muffins faster and better than any human could,
whereas walking robots are still pretty terrible at walking even when compared
to a below-average human.

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chaosmachine
There's something a bit frightening about it. I think it's registering as a
giant spider in the primal instinct section of my brain.

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diiq
I'd attribute it to the jerky, springy motion --- it appears not to have the
sinusoidal velocity cruve we expect from a friendly mammal.

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sown
i wish i was smart

