Stringman's new control panel

[Nathaniel Nifong]

This week I’m proud to announce the launch of a new web-based control panel for stringman at http://neufangled.com/control_panel
This control panel allows a Stringman owner to control his or her robots from anywhere in the world, so it really does function like a security camera with a hand.

This panel also serves as the tool for building a dataset of targets. Candidate objects on the floor for cleanup are recognized by a network and the user can add, remove or adjust them before setting stringman to work on them. The final set of targets is added to a database that helps improve that network over time.

The location of the laundry basket, or other arbitrary drop points in the room are tracked by clipping simple tags on them.
When driving the robot directly in the web interface with a gamepad, it can be helpful to change the perspective from which you are controlling it, so several motion perspectives are available, including a “seat tag” in case you are in the room with the robot, in seat tag mode it will always orbit your location, making it intuitive to fly around.

I’m also working on the next hardware revision of the gripper, which eliminates the freedom to swing below the gantry platform and will have a wrist DOF. The second board revision is back from JLPCB and being tested now.

The website also had a new page outlining future developments at neufangled.com/future

Upcoming videos:

• The geometry of cable driven parallel robots (joint video with Hangprinter founder Tobben)

• A cost breakdown of the stringman pilot prototype

• Introduction to Stringman - from open box to clean room

I've also been hard at work trying to find the perfect supplier for the main power tether. A wire that carries 1A at 24v and is almost as small and light and slippery and flexible and invisible as braided fishing line is no easy thing to find. I am looking for beta testers. If you would like to install a robot in your room, please get in touch