RaspberryPi Zero Takes the Wheel in Miniature Fighting Robot

by

Looking to capitalize on his familiarity with the Raspberry Pi, [Sebastian Zen Tatum] decided to put the diminutive Pi Zero at the heart of his “antweight” fighting robot, $hmoney. While it sounds like there were a few bumps in the road early on, the tuxedoed bot took home awards from the recent Houston Mayhem 2021 competition, proving the year of Linux on the battle bot is truly upon us.

Compared to using traditional hobby-grade RC hardware, [Sebastian] says using the Pi represented a considerable cost savings. With Python and evdev, he was able to take input from a commercial Bluetooth game controller and translate it into commands for the GPIO-connected motor controllers. For younger competitors especially, this more familiar interface can be seen as an advantage over the classic RC transmitter.

Read more…

Hand Gesture Recognition Raspberry TensorFlow

by

Hand gesture recognition based on Raspberry Camera and TensorFlow. All the steps are described from the dataset creation to the final deploy.

The idea behind this project is to create a device able to drive an actuator based on the gesture of the hand’s fingers.

The project is specialized on recognizing streaming images of the hand taken by the raspberry-pi camera.

The data set of the images used to train the model was created ad hoc with images taken from the Raspberry Camera only (not other devices) with a neutral background.

The model is based on the transfer learning of the Inception v3 model, customized to handle the project requirements. The last layer was removed from the Inception v3 model and a few layers were added to be customized with the new dataset and to provide the output for just four cases.

The model was trained with the images collected and pre-classified earlier on a desktop (32 Gb ram + GPU). Once the model was trained and tested, it was exported to the Raspberry Pi.

Read more…

Tencent’s Robotics X Division Shows Off Ollie, a Leaping Wheeled Robot with a Clever “Tail”

by

Designed around two wheels on four joined “legs,” the secret to Ollie’s agility is a hidden third wheel on an extra limb.

Robotics X, the robotics research division of Chinese multinational conglomerate Tencent, has shown off a new robot dubbed Ollie — capable of performing the skateboarding trick which provided its name, by swinging around a wheeled “tail.”

Read more…

Here’s what happened when a Tesla owner built a robot to plug in his car

by

A Tesla owner built a robot to automatically plug his electric car for overnight charging — something that Tesla has previously announced that it is working on.
Here’s what happened.

The idea of automatically charging electric vehicles have been around for a while.
It seems to have emerged from the idea that electric vehicles are not as convenient to charge as gasoline-powered vehicles are to fuel.
This is not exactly true.

Electric vehicles can be charged overnight at home, which makes them way more convenient than gas-powered cars.
The only aspect that can be seen as less convenient is the charge time versus refueling time when on the go.

Read more…

Novel Research Powers Multiple Wearable Devices From a Single Source

by

This new technology enables a single device to wirelessly power other wearables, using the human body as a medium for power transmission.

Wearable devices have become a large part of how we live our lives — from phones and watches to wireless health monitors and more — and will undoubtedly remain so. A major pain point in using and maintaining a variety of devices, however, is how to keep them properly powered. Charging numerous devices every day can be cumbersome and inconvenient, especially when the battery runs out. A team of researchers at the National University of Singapore have developed a solution: technology that allows a single device to wirelessly power other wearables, using the human body as a medium for power transmission.

Read more…

‘Hey Google, piss off the neighbors’ – A mad genius built a ‘TallyWhacker’ that noisily activates via Google Assistant command

by

Do you recall when you were a kid, and there was nothing quite so fascinating as an old-fashioned spring doorstop? You know, the kind that goes “sproi-oi-oi-oing” with any errant tap? A Reddit apartment dweller, having presumably endured one late-night Riverdance rehearsal too many, decided to weaponize this experience.

He attached said sproinger to an activation arm, mounted it to the ceiling, and powered it with an Arduino microcontroller to give it voice activation powers via Google Assistant. Now with the voice command “hey Google, turn on the TallyWhacker,” the arm bar rolls, the tally is thusly whacked, and the upstairs neighbor presumably begins drafting an email to the landlord. To add a bit more fun to the process, the arm bar will oscillate randomly for between five and thirty seconds.

Read more…