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I found a photo of my first (programmable) robot build back in 1979 which worked by recording tones on a cassette player! I have no idea why I did not have a shirt on, I think it was a hot Summer that year!
Steve S and Rex (and of course DJ) have produced some awesome robots in the past years so I thought it would be neat to start a thread on forum members first robots so we can see where everyone started from, so here is mine.
Tony
Thanks for the honorable mention guys. Wow, epic. That's a BIG complement (get it; epic... Big.... hehehe
As for original I have to say that the ones you guys are making are very cool , edgy and fun!
Glen , is this the first time you've posted a pic of your Steampunk bot? I've been looking forward to seeing it. He's awesome!
Yes, this is my first robot. I did make a robot Halloween costume for my son many years ago out of tinfoil and dryer exhaust tubing but I don't think that counts. Here's a couple pics of B9;
This is a great thread seeing peoples first robot attempts and very impressive most of them are to!
Wow! Really! Hell yes I'll take some! What are you charging?
I've already made a case for the window motors so I can just drop a potentiometer in there. It's gonna be incorporated in the shells I'm making to cover up the endoskeleton. In fact I'm making the shells to where a human can wear them too and use that as a controller for the robot. I took some influence from an 80's cartoon "Centurions".
But thanks Toymaker! Please contact me through my main email, info@ikoncustoms.com
Also check out my site to see my hand sculpted work! No 3D printing!
www.ikoncustoms.com
Influences are interesting for our first robot builds, mine was the film Silent Running, and you can probably see this in the picture that I posted. When I first saw the drones, I just wanted to build one, but my skills were very limited in those days. I have a friend that has build half size versions of all the drones and they look ace, here is a pic.
I would really like to have one of these drones in my robot collection.
Rodney bot. It was a major task. When I got it built, I called up Heiserman for advice. He told me that if I followed the book exactly, it would not work. Just go get a completely factor unit called the RB5X. I bought two of those. One with the arm, one without. Then I build a Hero1 robot. I guess that would've qualified me. So, Hero1 was the first. But, not of those robots did anything that made me happy. By then, I had a really nice computer that could talk and also understand me. It was nice. But it was not practical to put that $15K computer in the robot. It simply would not fit. After many attempts to build the robot that I wanted, I realized that the technology was not here. So, I trashed the robots and gave up. Next many years later I figured the technology would have been better. so, I started with parallax's Bo-Bot. I built it with a basic stamp. Soon I upgrade to the BSII, then I moved to the Arduino and Upgraded it to the 32 bit version. I was still not satisfied with it. All of the many robots that I made could do many things,but not the good stuff. I got tired of having a robot that could do Great Optical Avoidance , but not much of anything else. When I discovered the EZB, I became very excited. I saw the QBO and bought one of those. But, Qbo like many others in his generation can do ONE thing very good. But, when you put it all together and ask QBO to do many things at once, he will fail. So, his but is UP for $ale. Ten years ago, I built the Leaf project. I still have him and he has 23 emotions and many of the items I want. But, he has his limits. I have tried on the EZB to do many things at once, I EZB was giving me some trouble doing that. So, I put TWO EZBs and a Third EZB4 on order.
The Chat- bots are getting very promising and with the W3 running Windows8 looks promising. But, I am failing in my old age and can't do much of the things I used to. I am building ONE last project. Project Sunshine. She is mostly apart. But, at one point I got her to work except being Paraplegic.
What I am trying to build is a robot that:
a. Is centered around a very smart chatbot.
b. Be able to understand speech and give you an intelligent answer.
c. If it doesn't know the answer, to look it up on the net and find the answer.
d. A robot that can be taught and has a LEARN function.
e. give me time of day, month, day of week and be a calendar.
f. Obstacle avoid and maneuver through the house.
g. have working arms and hands
h. recognize faces and tell me who that are.
I. play games like 20Questions, clueso.
J. Understand a Natural language with slang.
k. Be a Watchman using his sensors.
l. be able to put up wikipedia and google and other stuff.
j. be able to have a powerful web search engine that can find most anything.
k. be able to do complicated Math problems using WolfRamAlpha.
l. Have a personality and emotions.
m. be able to recharge when needed.
n. Be able to be expanded if I have other things. (I can't think of them right now.)
o. Be able to have enough emotions to form a friendship (simulated.)
p. My computers have most all of these capabilities but that is running each set by itself.
I need to find a way to put it all together.
q. It would be nice if the robot has an Aesthetic value. I think Tony will be doing that for people.
r. Speak with understandably perfect grammar.
s. Be able to be taught things and maintain it's database with data.
and be able to call up those things later.
t. be able to think with Fuzzy Logic and make Smart Guesses.
u. Be able to program itself using the environment for data.
v. I was hoping to achieve Singularity in my lifetime, but I guess it won't, so we have to Simulate.
w. Have interchangeable tools for the hands. Example Drill, forceps, etc.
x. be able to record it's visual environment and make notes.
For instance, if Dad says, Where is my hat, the robot would look in his memory and
say "at 2pm it was on the sofa underneath a pillow.
y. be able to leave notes for other members of the family,like
" John called Helen at 9AM and asked her to call him at 8pm today."
"Bobby, I am glad you are home from school. You mother told me to remind you that your
after-school snake is in the refrigerator."
z. Be able to Hug you when you need a Hug.
Can't think of anything right now. I am suffering a headache from a sinus infection.
Anyway, that is part of what I want. Some things will have to be simulated
My Lost in Space B9 EZB Build
However here they are if you don't want to make the trip:
There was a little discussion that my computer power supply wasn't able to supply enough amps to the motors to do the job but I think it was just fine. If anything was undersized it would have been my wiring and connection types but I doubt it. I hope it works for you because these are great little motors.
Sorry to hijack your cool thread Tony! Just trying to help.
About how many pounds do you think the motors could raise? I am curious?
People like your work.
Robotics utilizing touch tones was defnitley on the cutting edge in the late 70's! A very ambious project that shows your great interest in robotics.
Your Big Trak XTR with PC com port, IOS, and Android support was amazing.
I hope this link of James (built in the mid 80,s), my first programable robot works.
James
So many robots on the EZ Robot forum and I love exploring all the cool builds.
Steve S
I always thought the HERO Robot was such an advanced robot when it came out. Very interesting.
That must have been an been a very enjoying build.
Steve S
Thank you so much! I'm sure I'll be alright since I'm using the Bosches just for the pivot points on the arm, so it's not gonna need a "vertical" load.
Here's a photo of where I'm gonna put them.
But really, that's crazy generous, "free"? I'm sure I can return the favor somehow. If this works, are these widely available? I may want to market some of my arm designs to more "adventurous" builders, who wants to look more than the generic simpleton designs most companies offer...
irobot58 Hero Jr took a lot of my time and i had to give it away to some kids that showed interest in robots due to my moving from Birmingham, AL to Chicago, IL to help build the first computer stored program call processing system at Bell Labs.
@Doombot, I think they will work well for you, but you may need to couple 2 together at the elbow joint if it is to pick up heavy loads.
@Robot-Doc, I always wanted a Hero robot, it had the Votrax SC01 phoneme (single chip) speech synthesizer by a company called Federal Screw. In 1981 I wanted my robots to talk, and sent off (to the States) for an SC01, the chip (from memory) was about £30 delivered, in those days £30 was a weeks wages for some people! It was a great little chip and easy to use with an 8 bit bus (6 lowest bits for phoneme selection and the upper 2 bits for infliction) and strobe/ack pins. It sounded very robot like, I think the SC01 was used in the film "War games" as the computers voice.
I found numerous videos of the Hero Jr. ( A very advanced robot in 1984!, and somewhat today, 30 years later!.)
Sharing robotics and teaching with young students is what I want.
I also thought the voice sounded like "WAR GAMES" .
Maybe AIMEC EZ Robot will continue?
Now we can build our own with EZ Robot.
Steve S