Qualcomm 3D Printed Micro Rover using IOIO

[Bill Carter]

I came across this today and thought people might be interested.

https://www.qualcomm.com/invention/research/projects/robotics/micro-rover

There are design files for printing the rover parts on a Makerbot replicator and some (very simple) sample code. I don't have a Makerbot but I am thinking I could look around for a service that would print it for me.

[Bill Carter]

 I looked around to see who would print it, very interesting. There is a local UPS store that will print objects, they wanted more than $500. You can get a 3D printer on Amazon now for less than that. I found a guy locally that will do the job for under $100. Still a little high given that you can buy a good metal rover chassis for that price but I am going to try it.

[Ytai Ben-Tsvi]

I have one of those. It's awesome. The kids love it too!

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 7:24 PM, Bill Carter <a11y...@gmail.com> wrote:

 I looked around to see who would print it, very interesting. There is a local UPS store that will print objects, they wanted more than $500. You can get a 3D printer on Amazon now for less than that. I found a guy locally that will do the job for under $100. Still a little high given that you can buy a good metal rover chassis for that price but I am going to try it.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ioio-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ioio-users+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to ioio-...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/ioio-users.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Bill Carter]

You have one? Very cool. I have been ordering the parts, a fairly long list of screws, spacers, motors, etc. Also looking at the detailed assembly instructions. Its a remarkably sophisticated piece of work, everything is cleverly designed and fitted together. There is a small mirror on a rotating platform that a cellphone camera would be pointing at, ingenious. Its all servos, can be driven directly from the board. I am thinking that the basic design could be built upon further.

[Ytai Ben-Tsvi]

I cheated. I traded mine with Qualcomm in exchange to 3 IOIOs that they desperately needed during Maker Faire :)

I agree that the design is very clever and elegant. I too am hoping that this robot will attract the interest of hobbyists - there are a lot of interesting applications that can be built on top of it.

On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 9:30 PM, Bill Carter <a11y...@gmail.com> wrote:

You have one? Very cool. I have been ordering the parts, a fairly long list of screws, spacers, motors, etc. Also looking at the detailed assembly instructions. Its a remarkably sophisticated piece of work, everything is cleverly designed and fitted together. There is a small mirror on a rotating platform that a cellphone camera would be pointing at, ingenious. Its all servos, can be driven directly from the board. I am thinking that the basic design could be built upon further.

[Bill Carter]

That is definitely cheating, ha. I'll post my progress on this build as it moves forward. Some of the parts have been printed.

[Bill Carter]

Well, I've had some disappointing experiences with this. Surprising!

It turns out that the rover parts are very difficult for a consumer-grade desktop 3D print to make. Two different people have tried to print them and failed to make most of the components. Of the ones that were printed, there is a large amount of "support material" all over the parts that has to be removed by hand - cutting, filing, and sanding off the excess plastic. The print process (assuming it could be accomplished) would be very lengthy, at least 20 hours.

There are online printing businesses that will make things like this if you upload the design files. Shapeways is one of them, I uploaded the files (there are about 15 parts) and it would cost about $200 to have them all printed there. Its more than I can justify for a robot the size of two hands. You can buy metal parts to make something similar for around $60.

So I think I'll hold off on it for now. Maybe prices will come down or printers will improve in a few months.

[Banibrata Dutta]

Hope that the Seeed studio folks take note. They might manage to pull it all off, for much less. 3D printing of anything serious, is still relatively expensive. The hobby-grade DIY 3D-printers usually find it hard to achieve the finish and something that needs to have extremely smooth surface/edges.

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ioio-users" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ioio-users+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to ioio-...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/ioio-users.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

regards,
Banibrata
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bdutta
http://twitter.com/edgeliving

[Bill Carter]

Prices for some printable items on Shapeways dropped recently and since I had already bought the motors and other hardware for this rover I took the plunge and had them print the rest of it. Still more than I would have liked to spend for something this size but the coolness factor was hard to resist. There is a little forklift mechanism on the front that I had thought to not bother with but I decided to go ahead and get that as well. I am waiting on the linkage hardware to arrive and then will complete it and post some more details. Qualcomm made a couple of Android example clients available as precompiled apk's and in source code form. One of them lets you drive the rover around across the bluetooth connection, turn the mirror, and raise/lower the forklift. The other is supposed to perform some kind of line following.

[Bill Carter]

I finally had the remaining forklift parts printed. Interestingly, the front "forks" had to be printed in a slightly stronger material with some metal in it. Over the recent holiday I have spent some hours on enhancements to the hardware build. Also I found an open source application that lets you run an IOIO device with two cellphones. One cellphone operates the IOIO and acquires video that it streams to the other one over WiFi. The second cellphone displays the video and operates the device remotely through the first cellphone. I think I can get that working with this rover before I have to go back to work next week.

[noros]

very nice.

If the app you mentioned is the IOIO-CameraRobot, I have a modified version with two joysticks: left one to control the robot, right one to control the pan & tilt unit. You could use the right joystick to control the forklift.

https://github.com/UCI-ABR/ABR_ClientServerRemote

Sorry but I didn't have much time to comment the code or optimize it.

[Bill Carter]

Yes that is the app, thanks. I have a version of that original app working with this rover now - at least in the sense that it can steer the rover around remotely and in all directions with the single joystick control. I attached the "IOIO" cellphone (the one that interfaces directly with the IOIO on the rover) to the forklift with some rubber bands and drove it around with the "controller" cellphone. It beams out video from the rover! But a very unstable mounting system, the phone keeps flopping over. :)

I pulled down your version and will definitely have a look. I have a little pan-and-tilt mechanism that I put together with this kit. Maybe I can use your additional joystick to control that, and just add some up/down buttons for the forklift later. If I get that going I will talk to you about incorporating it into your version as an option. Or if that doesn't make sense I could just fork it I guess.

My thinking is that I can mount a cellphone onto the pan/tilt device and attach it to the bed of the rover. Should be able to mount some additional sensors later as well, and have something pretty interesting to experiment with. I'm concerned about the size of the cellphone though. Ideally it would be a really small phone, not one of these 4.7" behemoths. I've been looking around on ebay for tiny Android phones that run Jellybean or higher and not seeing anything.

[Ytai Ben-Tsvi]

Have you tried mounting the phone in the intended place and using the mirror trick to change the point of view? Might be mechanically simpler than pivoting the entire phone. 

--

[jerry w]

Put injection molded plastic in Cap'n  crunch boxes and we might hit the big time 😇

[Bill Carter]

I did try that of course, and it works but there are some undesirable effects. You get a view from about 3 inches off the ground looking forward through the forklift. It will 'pan' (swivel left and right) but there is no 'tilt'. The image is upside down, and in landscape mode only. I am suspecting that this setup was not intended to be viewed by humans, it was probably for allowing the robot to recognize and pick up things with the forklift. Qualcomm has an image processing SDK as part of their Vuforia package, I have played with it a little and it can do some very interesting things.