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Leveraging Hackaday

A project log for Ivan the Teambuilt Robot

An e-NABLE robotics project to give hands to those without use of their hands. Designed with your help.

les-hallLes Hall 09/10/2015 at 15:385 Comments

Thanks to the #Hacker Channel, I have enjoyed more than a few interactions with some of the people who frequent this place. Each day my level of astonishment increases as I begin to realize the significance of the projects and that level of talent that Hackaday contains. As Ivan's creator I am beginning to see myself as largely Hacker extraordinaire to be walking among these giants, and in part also as orchestrator coordinating an assembly of the powerful technology that I am discovering with every conversation.

By this I mean that I intend to leverage the technology of Hackaday to leapfrog Ivan far ahead of his humble beginnings, and do so very quickly. For example there is Bowler Studio with it's DyIO module. At a cost of $100 I get the high speed motor/sensor interface required for Ivan without having to cobble together a bunch of breadboards and chips and wires and Arduinos; plus I get access to a scripting environment that connects me with hardware and computing resources beyond what I had thought was possible.

Because of the Bowler Studio / DyIO offerings of Neuron Robotics Cooperative (that's who makes the software / hardware combo), Ivan can have real time motor/sensor control, video, and 3D reality scanning (not virtual reality - real reality) provided by Kinect. This gives Ivan strength and speed beyond humans as well as enhanced senses beyond that of humans, which can be done in a lot of ways, however with Bowler Studio's scripting languages (there are four of them) I can use artificial intelligence libraries and cloud based services to give Ivan the smarts to make use of those senses effectively.

The diverse and rapidly developing toolbox provided by Neuron Robotics may be able to catapult Ivan's abilities so far beyond what I thought might be practical and doable that Ivan's growth from his humble beginnings may surprise us all! It all depends on my ability to most effectively use the strength of the Neuron Robotics technology.

And that is only part of the story. Each day I become aware of new projects that can augment Ivan in different ways. Internet of Things over here, Smart Battery there, WiFi thingies in that corner, DNA recognizer up on this shelf, Brainwave scanning on the table - this place is jammed full of every technology Ivan would ever need and then some! I'm a kid in a candy store - join me, it's fun!

Les

Discussions

AVR wrote 09/13/2015 at 23:57 point

@Kevin Harrington BowlerStudio shoutout!!!!

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Les Hall wrote 09/10/2015 at 22:08 point

Yes to al three and three cheers for Hackaday!  My new home on the internet is a winner today.  And thank you Kevin for responding to the inspiration in this way.  That's the other thing I've noticed already:  project contributors want their project to be integrated into other projects, especially something such as a showcase project like Ivan is becoming, so they will actually do some work to knit the fabric between the two.  By altering their project to the needs of ours the result is that both projects benefit.  

Can you imagine a directed graph of Hackaday projects all integrated into each other like some crazy mesh diagram?  The strength, resilience, and good vibes created by such a structure is powerful!  I can't wait to finish 3D printing Ivan so I can dive into the Neuron Robotics offerings!  (And also soft prop, the brain of Ivan).  

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frankstripod wrote 09/10/2015 at 21:34 point

I also get inspired everyday at Hackaday Les :)

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Kevin Harrington wrote 09/10/2015 at 17:52 point

This gave some inspiration and i went searching into more AI features i can add for projects like this. I Just found Sphinx-4, which will be adding speech to text in the next release. SO AI, text to speech, speech to text, kinematics, and cad generation. Sounds like a recipe for some awesome robots...

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davedarko wrote 09/10/2015 at 15:44 point

Hear, hear :) I would love to see Ivan with all sorts of projects integrated, it makes sense and also appreciates the shared work of others around here :) 

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