TupperBot.com

Everyone in Saint Louis University is being really supportive and excited about the medals we got last week in RoboGames, so little by little they are publishing some news.

The first one was SLU’s official wesite in USA:

Right after that initial release, Jesus and I got an email from SLU Madrid asking if we minded them publishing in their own website about our story. Of course we are happy if they do it, so here it is:

We also made it to  SLU Madrid’s newspaper  and someone told us that our picture is now the desktop background in the computers at the labs in SLU Madrid, but I will not believe that till I see it with my own eyes… hahaha

Well, we are not “Oprah”, but this is a good way to start, isn’t it?

Little by little I’m running into more videos about the robotics area in Campus Party. I know some of you will disagree with what I’m saying here, so I’m willing to talk about it with you if you want.

Link to the original video on TVE’s website.

This is a small report made by TVE, the Spanish National TV, in Campus Party Europe where I talk a little bit about robotics.

Click here to see the original video.

“A team of SLU students, Angel Hernandez and Jesus Dominguez, competed in the RoboGames 2010. RoboGames, formerly know ROBOympics, is the biggest robot competition in the world, with 170 teams and over 600 engineers competing last year. IEEE, KEEN (Kern Engineering Entrepreneurship Network), and the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering departments sponsored the team RoboMadness.”

Check this link for more information.

For the first time ever, Spain has been competing in RoboGames (Formerly known as ROBOlympics). Jesus and I have been representing Spain and SLU under the team name “RoboMadness”. Thanks to people like Bob Allen, Ted Larson, Tony, Simone and David Calkins, we have had an awesome weekend in Silicon Valley… Well, besides spending a great time there, we also got three medals with the three robots that we took with us.

This is how we did in the contest:

• BalanBot was the first robot getting a Silver medal for Spain. Thanks to his incredible driving skills, Jesus beat Bob and Ted, Gold medalists in 2009. So it is a great achievement for the first time competing there.
• Escalador, in spite of all the technical problems that we ran into, gave us our second Silver medal. We are shutting for the gold medal in 2011 since our mechanical and electrical design was probably the best there. We just need more powerful batteries.
• TupperBot finally won the Gold Medal being the “Best of Show” . I still dont really like the idea of competing with TupperBot, but it seems to always work. As most of you know, the last time I competed was 4 years ago… in 2006 I got the first prize at MadridBot, held in Colegio Antonio Machado (Madrid) competing in “Prueba Libre”, wich is basically the same free style category that we found in RoboGames. Thanks to MadridBot I started making more robots but I didn’t really compete in any other event. Now all that passion that has been growing in me for those 4 years has taken me to get a Gold Medal in the ROBOlympics, held in San Antonio, known as Silicon Valley, worlds capital of engineering and technology.

From now on, ROBOlympics is a Mandatory event in our agendas, so we will be there next year trying to get even more medals competing in even more categories.

Robot builders, please, keep making your amazing machines… keep imagining the present, keep designing the future.

Do you want to know how amazing was our week right before getting to RoboGames?

“We missed the metro that would have taken us to the airport on time. This was in part due to a very slow guy walking downstairs in front of us, and in part due to me and angel trying to pay for the tickets with a $10 bill and a credit card at the same time, which confused the hell out of the machine.”

Jesus wrote an awesome summary of our experience getting there. Check it out Here

I will explain more later, but here you have some good code working for a line tracking robot that I have been developing within the last few months.

The camera connection and handlers are based in the awesome CatchItV

Download the code here (If the file is password protected is bc I am making relevant changes, but if you still want to use it just send me an email and I’ll tell you the code to use it under your responsability)

Folks, this is the first time I show something about my Senior Design Project. As I said in previous posts, I am working with another 6 engineers in an Underwater Robot to compete in the AUVSI this summer in San Diego.

Here you have what it seems to be the final design for the vertical thrusters of this exciting project… If you want to see it working underwater just wait for Thursday and more videos and pictures will be posted of this amazing thruster running in its “natural environment”

If you are working with powerful motors or other applications that require high current you might be interested in measuring the bunch of Amps running through your wires… sometimes a simple resistor is just not enough due to high currents and so on, so a good idea is to use this hall-effect sensor: ACS754

Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned in a previous post, there is a project going on right now in SLU where Boeing Engineers and Parks Students, are working in two teams to make a robotics showcase in Spring of 2010. Here is the article on the newspaper. (I have to explain that I know Robotics is Popular in US, but in SLU we still need to make it more popular, we are making huge steps, but is still needs to grow up I much more)

I want to thank Matt Wilhelm and Allison Reilly for helping and their words to me in the article. Awesome Job guys!