Robotics enthusiasts network

All Blog Posts (30)

Amazing robot precision

Article and video here - includes great video, dodgy music Continue

Added by Richard Vahrman on October 20, 2009 at 5:13pm — 1 Comment

I have been reading about robotic surgery. It is really amazing how this is coming along. I have a friend who has had several dental procedures that are fairly extensive. He can only have them done at Indianapolis hospitals. I wonder if Dental insurance plans cover this type of surgery. Anyway, I wonder as we… Continue

Added by Cindy Fallsen on October 8, 2009 at 9:12pm — No Comments

Fame and fortune - well not quite

Wohoo, someone posted a link to the video of my half walking robot on youtube from a blog on Make magazines website - suddenly I have had hundreds of hits and several subscribers. My thanks to Dave Hrynkiw who runs Solarbotics for sending the tweet that got their atten… Continue

Added by Bill Bigge on September 5, 2009 at 5:00pm — No Comments

Newsletter #6 - Swarmbots and Servos

How's everyone doing? Busy building lots of robots I hope, I know I am. Don't forget that you can blog about your projects and ideas on the site, upload videos and photos or start discussions around questions, knowledge sharing and any interesting items or aticles that yu might come across. The site is what you, the members, make it and the more you share, the more useful and interesting it is for yourself and others. Bill Bigge - What's wrong with Servos. Thursday 27th August at The Skiff… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on August 25, 2009 at 1:48pm — No Comments

Newsletter #5 - BuildBrighton and Dorkbots

Hi and welcome to our fifth newsletter. Quite a bit has happened on the Brighton Robotics front in the last month, and I've been run off my feet, largely because I have been involved in an exciting new project - BuildBrighton. You can read more about BuildBrighton below, but first lets recap some of the interesting things that have happened. First we had Tony Ellis come to talk to us about AIMEC:3, his voice recognition, web surfing robot and then we were honoured to host an electronics worksho… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on July 31, 2009 at 10:41am — No Comments

Frantic Fortnight - review

My hasn't it been a busy fortnight for Brighton Robotics? With one event a week for 3 weeks there has been so much going on I have been left rather too exhausted to review any of the fantastic events that have happened. First off, on 25th June, Tony Ellis came down to Brighton from Crowborough to tell us all about his robot building experiences, toy inventions and bootstrapped business running adventures. Tony (known to many on twitter and other forums as Toymaker2) has been building robots sin… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on July 13, 2009 at 3:23pm — No Comments

Newsletter #4 - Mitch Altman, art installations and Toymaker

If you never normally read our newsletter, please take the time to read this one. It contains some seriously cool information, honestly. It has been an exciting month. Mitch Altman is coming to Brighton Robotics to do an electronics workshop! The details are yet to be worked out, but in early July San Fransisco based hacker, inventor, pioneer in Virtual Reality and CEO of Cornfield Electronics Mitch Altman is coming to Brighton to give us his electronics workshop and to talk… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on June 17, 2009 at 11:42am — 2 Comments

I just saw the new Terminator movie and all I can say is gag

Last week I posted on my blog about how the new Terminator movie was pissing me off, since it was creating all this negative press in the mainstream media. I figured since I did that, it was only fair for me to actually go see the movie, so last Saturday I broke down and went to see it. Ok, let me start by saying that I am a big fan of science fiction. I love the sci fi movies (even the cheesy ones) that the… Continue

Added by Sara Morgan on June 11, 2009 at 1:57pm — No Comments

Newsletter #3 - Terminator and Tutorials

Hello and welcome to our third Brighton Robotics newsletter. I know I usually do these a week before our monthly event, but I sent so many group emails last week I thought I would give you all a break for a few days :-). This last month has been a very, very busy one for me, but less so for the site. It's been busy for me because I've been working on adding some new features that should become live very soon. I am hoping that these new features will help drive more traffic to the site and prov… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on May 27, 2009 at 7:00pm — No Comments

Competition for Shadow? New Low Cost, Dexterous Robotic Hand Operated By Compressed Air

Is this the competition for The Shadow Robot Company perhaps? The Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) of the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech has developed a unique robotic hand that can firmly hold objects as heavy as a can of food or as delicate as a raw egg, while dexterous enough to gesture for sign language - just like the Shadow Robot hand. RAPHaEL (Robotic Air Powered Hand with Elastic Ligaments) is also powered by compressed air but has a novel accordion type tube actuato… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on May 5, 2009 at 12:00pm — 2 Comments

Boys and Their Toys

I have been contacted by Tom Geiger, a photography student at Brighton University who is doing a project and would like our help. The project is called 'Boys and their toys' and Tom is looking for enthusiasts who love their toys to photograph as part of the project. He saw our site and felt that he would like to include robot builders in this. He is looking for volunteers who wouldn't mind him coming along and photographing them and their robots. As the project is titled 'Boys and Their Toys',… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on May 4, 2009 at 9:36pm — No Comments

Shadow Robot Review

Last night was a good night. I know that because my head hurts rather dramatically this morning. The cause? Another highly successful Brighton Robotics event. Graham Wiseman from the Shadow Robot Company came down to Brighton from North London laden with several hundred pounds worth of advanced robotics technology to talk to us about the company and the robotic hands that they build. By 8:15 we had about 20 people waiting full of anticipation about the e… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on April 24, 2009 at 12:30pm — No Comments

Wired Sussex Advert

We have had a fab front page ad this week in Wired Sussex advertising the Shadow Robot Company Talk and Brighton Robotics.

This amazing advert was done for us by our resident Graphic Artist and robotic kits guy… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on April 23, 2009 at 11:19am — 1 Comment

Newsletter #2

Happy (slightly belated) Easter Guys! Welcome to the Brighton Robotics second newsletter. First of all I would like to welcome the 15 new members that have joined the group since the last newsletter. The group is growing at an amazing rate and we've even gained a few international members. I hope that we are providing an interesting experience for you and a useful space for meeting and chatting with other roboticists. Last Event The last event, the Robot Hack Night, went extreme… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on April 16, 2009 at 1:32pm — No Comments

Arduino + Flash + Wii Nunchuck + Servos + Webcam

My first hackery in a year just got posted on Hack a Day :) Basically it's a Wii Nunchuck connected to an Arduino. There's a Lynxmotion pan+tilt kit attached to the Arduino, and a Webcam stuck to the pan and tilt kit. There was a laser too, but I've yet to find a way to secure it. The webcam can then be controlled by either the analog joystick, or the accelerometers inside the nunchuck.… Continue

Added by iestyn lloyd on March 30, 2009 at 5:13pm — No Comments

Brighton Robotics Robot Hack Night Review

There is a very strong geek community in Brighton, and being so close to London we have the enormous advantage of being only an hour away from all of their geek events too. One of the fastest growing community geek events in both cities seems to be hack days - where developers and designers all get together and compete to produce cool things in just one day. This is a great idea and some fabulous tools have been brought into reality during these events. But what about us hardware hackers? What i… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on March 30, 2009 at 2:00pm — 1 Comment

Next round of the Trossen Robotics Community Contest announced

This round is going to be a Tutorial Content. Trossen Robotics would like you to submit entries in the form of a detailed step by step ‘How-To’ or Informative Tutorials. You can find out more about the expectations of the entries and how to enter at the Trossen Robotics website. Perhaps one for our resident robot tutorialist, Steve? Prizes are as follows: 1st place Bioloid Comprehensive K… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on March 27, 2009 at 4:10pm — 1 Comment

CALL FOR ROBOT DESIGNS

Skynet are looking for enthusiastic designers to submit ideas of robots capable of benefiting humanity in a meaningful way "Do robots interest you? Do you think about how robots might be designed and engineered to be all they can be? Have you ever wanted to design a robot to help humanity? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then Skynet wants to hear from you. Join with us in helping to design and create the next steps in robotic technology. We know that human innovation is at the h… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on March 12, 2009 at 3:00pm — 17 Comments

My research project - Part 1

I've just put together, or rather significantly updated, a website that details the work I'm doing for my PhD. In very general terms it is partly about re-designing the hobby servo motor to make it suitable for robotics. This involved giving it the ability to control the forces it can generate rather than just control angles and velocities. With force control you can then get the servo to behave like a software controlled spring damper so you can make your robots legs, arms or grippers soft spri… Continue

Added by Bill Bigge on March 12, 2009 at 11:54am — 4 Comments

Brighton Robotics Launches New Twitter Updater

About a month or so ago I set up a twitter account for Brighton Robotics. I did this because I wanted a way to quickly and easily broadcast events that we were holding, new projects that members were undertaking and general robot related news that I came across. So far, I would have to say it's been a pretty good success, with several members joining, and enabling me to contact other roboticists around the country. It is, however, less of a group twitter account, and more of an account for me to… Continue

Added by Emily Toop on March 6, 2009 at 2:21pm — No Comments