William Cox's Posts

Neato Robotics XV-11 Lidar unit Hacked!

Posted by William Cox on November 30, 2010 at 5:36pm

A mere 10 days after I posted a $200 bounty on RobotBox for hacking the Neato Robotics XV-11's lidar unit, user Hash79 has provided a hack for the unit! Thanks to lots of help from the Trossen Robotics forum, and especially user Xevel (whose code Hash79 based his hack on) we now have access to a relatively inexpensive lidar unit that is capable of taking 360 degrees of distance measurements at 1 degree increments at 10 hz. The unit has been able to make measurements out to 6 meters (~18 feet).

A nice explaination of the serial protocol (there's actually two different firmware versions) along with parsing code, can be found on Xevel's Github repository.

Video of the hack is on the blog post.

The unit currently will only send back valid data once the unit is rotating at the correct speed, but if that can be spoofed, then the unit could possibly be used to make smaller incremental measurements over a small field of view (say, looking at 90 degrees downward for flying vehicles ... ).

Thanks to Matt Trossen at Trossen Robotics, RobotNV and RobotShop for chipping in some extra money for the bounty.

There's also still $200 outstanding to the first person to demonstrate using the sensor for SLAM between points A and B (thanks to RoboDynamics for that).

The Open Lidar Project - Hack the Neato XV-11 Lidar for a $400 Bounty!

Posted by William Cox on November 15, 2010 at 5:30pm

http://robotbox.net/blog/gallamine/open-lidar-project-hack-neato-xv-11-lidar-200-bounty

Hey everybody,

I was inspired by Ladyada's awesome Open Kinect hacking bounty, so I decided to have a little fun myself. I thought, "what's something else that needs hacking?", and it occurred to me that everyone has been talking about the Neato Robotics XV-11's sweet laser rangefinder (http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/30-laser-rangefinder), but nobody has hacked it yet (or at least talked about it) .

So, to get things started, I'm offering up $200 of my own money (plus RobotNV is offering another $100! http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/showthread.php?p=44058#post44058, and Matt Trossen of Trossen Robotics has offered another $100!) in order to get someone to hack it and publish open source documenthttp://www.trossenrobotics.comation/drivers for using it on a robot.

You can find more details here:

http://robotbox.net/blog/gallamine/open-lidar-project-hack-neato-xv-11-lidar-200-bounty

Tell your friends! Let's get this puppy hacking and getting useful data back.

My Failed Mini TriCopter

Posted by William Cox on September 17, 2010 at 10:58am

Here's my failed attempt at a mini tricopter design:

More details and pictures on my RobotBox project page. Any suggestions on getting it to work? I can't seem to find any mini RC helis that have props rotating in a direction opposite the ones on there.

Also, I'm looking for more flying robots to be added to RobotBox. It's a little light on aerial stuff :)

Submit your robot & win $1,000 in robot prizes from GoRobotics

Posted by William Cox on April 7, 2010 at 9:00am

I'm giving away $1,000 in robot prizes to celebrate the 10th birthday of my robotics blog, GoRobotics.net, this month! To enter, just post a comment with a link to your best robot here: http://www.gorobotics.net/the-news/robot-giveaway-10-years-of-gorobotics-1000-in-prizes/. Big thanks to our sponsors Pololu, Trossen Robotics, Zagros Robotics, Solarbotics , Vex Robotics, Apress, and No Starch Press.

Here's the prizes:

Grand Prize –Vex Dual Controller Starter Bundle with RobotC (donated by Vex Robotics), Pololu Jrk 21v3 USB Motor Controller (donated by Pololu), Build Your Own CNC Machine (donated by Apress), LEGO Mindstorms NXT One-Kit Wonders (donatedby No Starch Press). ($605 total!)

2nd Place Prize - Penguin Robot (donated by Trossen Robotics), Extreme NXT(donated by Apress), Wall Hugging Mouse Kit (donated by Zagros Robotics), LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Thinking Robots (donated by No Starch Press) ($268 total!)

3rd Place Prize – Oomlout Arduino Experimenters Kit (donated by Solarbotics),Practical Arduino and LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0: The Kings Treasure (donated byApress), and The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide (donated by No Starch Press) ($165 total!)

Hope to see lots of flying robots posted! Good luck. Don't forget to post your comment here: http://www.gorobotics.net/the-news/robot-giveaway-10-years-of-gorobotics-1000-in-prizes/

March Robot Giveaway to Celebrate GoRobotics’ 10th Birthday

Posted by William Cox on March 15, 2010 at 7:41am

Leading up to the 10th anniversary of my robotics blog, GoRobotics.net, I'm doing a series of robot prize giveaways. This month's giveaway features $250 worth of prizes from our sponsors Pololu,Super Droid Robots, Zagros Robotics, Solarbotics and No Starch Press.

1st Place Prize – Orangutan B-328 Robot Controller (donated by Pololu), 2x 24V 195 RPM Gear Motors (donated by Super Droid Robots), and The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book (donated by No Starch Press) – worth $100

2nd Place Prize – Arduino Duemilanove, Tamiya Gear Box and Sport Tires (donated byZagros Robotics), and The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide (donated by No Starch Press) - worth $75

3rd Place Prize – Herbie the Mousebot Kit (donated by Solarbotics), and LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Thinking Robots (donated by No Starch Press) – worth $75

It's simple and free to enter.

10th birthday of GoRobotics.net

Posted by William Cox on January 25, 2010 at 9:08am

So, I run a robotics blog at GoRobotics.net, and low-and-behold it's been 10 years since I started it! Yikes! Time flies (autonomously?). As a way to celebrate and say thanks to all the loyal readers and followers, I contacted several robot companies (Pololu, Trossen, Apress, and SuperDroid) and got them to donate some prizes. We got lots of cools things (with hopefully more to come), and I'll be giving them away on the site over the next few months leading up to the official birthday in April. You can enter the January giveaway here: http://www.gorobotics.net/the-news/january-giveaway-10-years-of-gorobotics/There's not any aerial-specific parts, but some of the prizes could be used on a Drone (a nice 6 servo controller from Pololu, for instance). Maybe I should see if Chris will donate a ArduPilot? :)Anyway, I'm pumped about the giveaways and excited for another 10 years of blogging! Let me know what you think.

Boeing’s Truck Mounted Laser Weapon Destroys Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Posted by William Cox on January 26, 2009 at 8:22pm

Watch out UAV builders or Boeing just might shoot you down with a giant freakin' laser beam! Directed energy weapons are still in their infancy, really, but it's only a matter of time. Today Boeing reported that they've successfully destroyed three, flying, UAVs using such a weapon. Boeing seems to be selling the idea of defending against rogue UAVs, but, to my knowledge, there haven’t been any such threats to date. Do they know something we don't know?