
Marty the Robot – Programmable walking robot for kids - nottombrown
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/marty-the-robot
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wxm
I've known the developers behind Marty for years - and this is an incredibly
well-engineered bipedal robot! With onboard WiFi or an RPi; and Python,
Scratch, C++, ROS - it's a bit like the Turtlebot for humanoids.

Fun fact, back in March I had the pleasure to share the stage with a handful
of Martys at the Edinburgh International Science Festival dancing away...

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jlev
I bought an mBot kit to make with my 6 year old cousin recently. It was fun,
but the default software was pretty limited, and the scratch programming
environment was not actually that easy to use for a beginner. Had to drop into
C for any sort of multi-tasking, and the documentation was mostly in Chinese.

Marty looks great, backed. Looking forward to playing robots in 2017!

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angusp
Hey, another Robotical engineer here, thanks for your support!

We're planning (read: really want to but might not have time to do everything
initially) to target a wide range of programming environments, with Scratch as
a _really_ basic level; This would make Marty a kinda smart toy, being able to
do logo-like things but not much more. The more complex approaches will of
course allow a lot more to be done with Marty.

The control board itself is going to have a fair amount of smarts, with an ARM
cortex M4 - but that'll be running our firmware, so playing with that would
require somewhat in-depth mbed experience. We'd expect most people to use the
i2c or serial interface to hack with Marty, by writing their own code on a
microcontroller, RasPi or BeagleBone, and packing that in with our board. As
it's all open source, adding to the firmware will be possible, just not the
most beginner friendly thing.

As for the WiFi functionality, we're looking at the ESP8266, (not final but
unlikely to change) and building a C++, Python and ROS
([http://ros.org](http://ros.org), serious robotics stuff, very cool) set of
APIs to use with Marty.

tl:dr; Two types of control, _standalone_ with an _added_ raspi/arduino/other
microcontroller, and _wifi-connected_ to a program running on a computer
(scratch, python, C++...)

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hobaak
Google is working on similar concept. But Marty is more advanced with 2 legs.
Educational toy market combined with programming is drawing lots of interest
as a trend.
[https://goo.gl/photos/cogjHRCsm11RJaad8](https://goo.gl/photos/cogjHRCsm11RJaad8)

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asimuvPR
Anybody have more info regarding the control board?

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edran
Hey there, Robotical developer here!

What would you like to know in particular?

Edit:

To add more generic info, as it is shown in the video we have quite a few
prototypes and we are now working on the final design of each piece of
hardware (including the control board).

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asimuvPR
Hi!

I read the description (did not watch video) and wanted to know more about the
actual hardware (chip used, GPIO, power consumption, etc).

Project look great, btw. :)

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angusp
I wrote a bit more detail here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11903939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11903939)
but

Still very alpha, specs currently are STM32F446RE (ARM M4), ESP8266 (WiFi, for
control from a computer, phone...) and an accelerometer on-board. 9 channel
servo control with current sensing, JTAG/USB for programming, i2c and serial
interface for talking to it from an arduino, raspberry pi or other
microcontroller. We're not expecting to have much GPIO free, and as I said,
the firmware it's running is kinda complex, so we're not expecting most people
to change it.

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asimuvPR
How much weight does the frame support? Does the weight need to be centrally
located? I'm thinking this would be very nice with one of those small
touchscreen displays attached to it.

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angusp
It's fine with a reasonable amount of weight - I'd have to ask Sandy how much
weight Marty can take before he physically can't move, but a touchscreen
should be fine, and won't disrupt his walking ability much. Of course you
could re-plan his walking with the weight taken into account, but that's quite
complex. We'll probably have standard mounting holes on top of his head, so
should be a nice and easy hack :D

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asimuvPR
If you keep answering I'll keep asking! :)

How many degrees of side-to-side motion can the frame take before it falls
down? I'm thinking of getting two of these, putting a touchscreen on each one,
and having them play joust. The objective would be to touch a dot displayed on
the other players touchscreen. The things I come up with...

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angusp
Well I like the sound of getting another one...

By side-side motion I'm guessing you mean a tipping force - and the the answer
would be that he's pretty hard to shove over, at the limit of his lean he's
stable, 10 degrees tilt and he'll fall. From fully upright, you need a bit
more of a shove - having just pushed one over. Sandy says they can tip
themselves if you wobble fast enough.

We're guessing you were thinking of something like this -->
[http://i.imgur.com/Cmmwu5A.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Cmmwu5A.jpg)

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asimuvPR
Yes, exactly. This platform is very affordable and would make a great
introduction to a sumo-type robot competition using bipeds. But not shoving
robots around a la RoboOne, but hitting a target drawn on a touchscreen. Its
something Ive been tinkering about for a while.

I appreciate the answers. Best of luck with the project!

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tlarkworthy
Yes! Ordered for my kids (a.k.a. myself)

