Category: Project

Dweebvision

Dweebvision, a low cost video telepresence rover, is one of Glenn Currie‘s creations. A durable as it is simple, Dweebvision has survived operation by hundreds of kids over five RoboFests and many school events.

The Dweebvision vehicle is a radio controlled toy car, equipped with Pixelvision video camera and transmitter.

The chassis is made out of an “after Christmas” special 4-wheel drive truck from Radio Shack. The remote control for steering the base is on ~27 MHz. and offers no interference for the 900 MHz. audio-video transmitter. The unit runs for about 4 1/2 hours on one set of alkaline batteries. I added a xenon strobe to Dweeb for safety because all kids want to do with it is drive up behind someone and have them trip over the robot.

The person at the control station sees and hears the world in Dweebvision, and can control the car as it navigates its surroundings by viewing a monitor. Many of the children visiting RoboFest watched in amazement as no one seemed to be controlling the RC car. The navigator can sit out-of-sight from the vehicle and have a little fun teasing the kids.

“I built the group’s first telepresence bot called Dweebvision. It has (yes, it is still working) a Fisher Price Pixelvison camera attached to a 900MHz. audio / video transmitter. Dweeb sends back live video and sound. The automatic audio gain control in the Pixelvison camera works perfectly – reducing the audio while the unit is driving around and the noisy plastic gear motors are on and increases the microphone sensitivity when the motor noise stops.”

Glenn Currie

Dweebvision was built, overnight, before Robofest III, after collecting all the parts over the period of a few months. It gets updated, at times, with a night vision camera and has been used to scout out problems under an ice rink and look for pets under houses. Dweeb is a telepresence device and is run by a remote operator. It has no on-board microprocessor or brain. When I was in school we called a person with no apparent brain and a head filled only with that which was put there by others, a “Dweeb”.

“Dweeb has been used in countless demonstrations over the years. I found attaching the camera and video transmitter with rubber bands and Velcro was the way to go. Anything less flexible was trashed in no time. With rubber bands and Velcro I simply pick up the “big chunks” of the robot after it has been stepped on and mash them back into place. Most schools have walls of enameled brick and Dweeb gives a great demo when driven between desk legs in nearby classrooms. Dweeb is small and travels in a cardboard file box to school demos.”

Glenn Currie

Dweebvision was the first of the telepresence robots created by Robot Group members. The Mobile Platform followed soon afterwards.

Exhibit Controller Board

Another effort of The Robot Group has been to develop a multi-purpose microcontroller system appropriate for controlling motors, sensors, and other devices.

Connected together in a network, groups of these systems can be controlled via a higher level central computer. This can be used to control complex robotics systems and can produce striking behavior of museum exhibits, and information about exhibit behavior and crown activity and interaction from one exhibit to the next.

The Exhibit Controller Board was initially designed as part of the Berzerkwerks (Aug. ’91) exhibit at Austin’s Children’s Museum and subsequently has been used in several Robot Group projects.

It incorporates a methodology to allow the onboard Motorola MC68HC11E9 microcontroller to control up to 28 servo motors. Each system provides connection for a Motorola MC68332BCC, a small but powerful MC68332-based computer system, which may act locally or serve as the master controller for up to 14 other systems.

Exhibit Controller Board (unpopulated), created by Bill Craig and Alex Iles
Exhibit Controller Board (unpopulated), created by Bill Craig and Alex Iles

Alex Iles designed the hardware and the software for servo control. He later revised the design to incorporate MIDI communications and to reduce the size of the circuit board.

Bill Craig developed a real-time distributed operating system allowing the network of exhibit controllers to operate at its full potential. The operating system runs on a Motorola MC68332BCC (which acts as the central controller) mounted on one of the networked boards.

Projects incorporating the exhibit controller include Big Rock Robotic Tower, Sparky, the Robotic Pup, and the Tai Chi Dancers (a moving sculpture consisting of choreographed robotic arms, which utilizes a network of controllers and the distributed operating system).

Mechanical Pit Bull

The pit bull has a nasty reputation as a cruel and vicious breed. In Austin, TX, there lives the Mechanical Pit Bull, a beast so ferocious and fierce that even the most stout-hearted bull terrier would flee in terror.

The Mechanical Pit Bull, a nightmarish dog-like contraption, some six feet long, is built from heavy-duty welded and bent pieces of sheet metal. It twists about, thrashing its jagged-edge legs and jaws, and its thick electro-pneumatic torso.

As it moves, the metallic sound of its grinding, metal legs and the hissing from the compressed air create an eerie atmosphere for this robotic entity. No one dares to challenge this beast. No one, that is, except Brooks Coleman.

Brooks, a founding member of The Robot Group and the creator of the Mechanical Pit Bull, often wrestles with his creation in dangerous displays of man vs machine.

Has the Mechanical Pit Bull ever bitten the hand that feeds it? “Yes. Many times,” according to Brooks who used to have a lot more hair.

Note 1 : There is some evidence that the Mechanical Pit Bull evolved from the Centipede that appeared at RoboFest 1 (1989).

Note 2 : It is unclear, at the moment, whether the Mechanical Pit Bull appeared at the Cyberspace Convention, hosted by The Robot Group (1990); however, it did appear at RoboFest 2 (1991).

The background material for this page is derived from an archived page on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Some links may have been added, removed, or updated.

DECtalk model DTC01

DECtalk model DTC01
DECtalk model DTC01

“DECtalk is a text-to-speech converter that provides any computer with a human-sounding voice. You can enter the text from a host computer or a terminal keyboard connected to the unit. You can hear the resulting speech through the built-in speaker, a headset, external speakers with an amplifier, or a telephone. You can also display the spoken output on a monitor screen or print it in hardcopy form.”

DECtalk model DTC01 documentation

This unit, pictured above was owned and operated by Eric Lundquist. It was utilized both the for the Robot Brain and Babbling Head projects .

For a short history of DECtalk development by Edward Bruckert, see here. Thanks to Tom Morin for locating this link.

[Text and image originally from http://wiki.therobotgroup.org/wiki/DecTalk]

Crawling Hand

The Crawling Hand, an automated, air-powered, mechanical sculpture, was another of Brooks Coleman’s creations.

“The Crawling Hand was first used at a ’10 Minutes Max’ show at [perhaps] the Vortex when they were across the hall from the original location for Children’s Museum.”

“I made it from some scrap metal I got from East Austin Pipe and Supply. It ran for about 3 shows but was too much of a hassle to store. When I moved out of the warehouse, I took it apart and used the metal for the first batch of metal bras. The rest is history.”

Brooks Coleman

Outreach : Space Shuttle Simulator

Throughout its history, The Robot Group’s outreach program at area primary schools has been a key activity. “Robots, Gadgets and Gizmos,” a demonstration of robot construction using common household materials, was regularly presented to grade school children identified as “at-risk” and disadvantaged.

One long-term project, the Space Shuttle simulator at Kealing Junior High (since renamed Kealing Middle School), stands above the rest. Science students learned about mechanics and computer control by constructing robot arms used in their final semester projects.

This project was under the direction of Robot Group member, Linda Brown. She was ably-assisted by Alex Iles, Brooks Coleman, and Bill Craig.

Group members also assisted Kealing students by supplying robotic arms and telepresence equipment.

Kealing Junior High's Space Shuttle simulator
Kealing Junior High’s Space Shuttle simulator

This Space Shuttle mock-up, featuring a large robotic manipulator-arm constructed by the students from salvage, appeared at the Cyberspace Convention (1990) and at several RoboFests. The students used the simulator to “fly” missions and accomplish tasks such as rescuing satellites and performing experiments. During these simulated missions, the ground crews communicated with the flight crew via computer terminals and video cameras.

Bipedal Ornithopter

This project was one of several developed by David Santos.

Bipedal Ornithopter
Bipedal Ornithopter designed and built by Dave Santos and George Parks

“It runs on two legs, flaps wings to take flight, and flies nimbly about the nooks and crannies of urban landscapes.”

description from an early web site

Collage of parts of the Bipedal Ornithopter

The blimp was a 12-foot-long airship with running legs (lower left) and insect-like wings (lower right).

It was one of The Robot Group’s most popular projects and had been featured on the Discovery Channel’s Invention Series, on ABC’s Good Morning America, and in Newsweek magazine.

Poster for the Bipedal Ornithopter
Poster for the Bipedal Ornithopter, one of The Robot Group’s most popular exhibits. Designed and built by Dave Santos and George Parks.

Babbling Head

The Babbling Head Robot, better known as Babbling Head is one of The Robot Group’s iconic exhibits.

Babbling Robot Head is perhaps one of the finest examples of our group’s efforts to meld art and technology. It is certainly one of the classiest. Brooks Coleman, a genius at wood-crafting, designed and crafted the various wood elements that went into this piece. These wood elements are as diverse and as rich as purple heart and oak and as raw as tanzania root.

The base of the piece is purple heart wood and the neck and collar bones are pow amavia woods. The organic brain in this robot is a piece a tanzania root that Brooks filed and fitted perfectly to this piece.
The rawness and natural ridges of the wood root give it a very natural organic-looking brain.

Brooks, who also does metal forging, tailored the metal nose and half head piece for Babbling Head while Laurie Davis forged the eyes.

The eyeballs are hammered silver with LEDs illuminating the iris centers. The eyeballs are also servo-controlled and capable of rolling.

The neck and the lips are made of soft plastic for mobility. The lips are molded black silicone and the neck-pipe piece is actually a dryer vent pipe.

The servos are each fitted with a winch pulley which Brooks turned from nylon. He machined a custom tool to create the spline that fits the standard Futaba servo shaft.

This robot is fitted with a Mini SSC II board that operates a series of hobby servo motors that move the lips, eyeballs and neck areas.

The DecTalk provides the computer voice that brings the Babbling Robot Head to life.

Alex Iles was instrumental in developing and programming the original exhibit controller for this piece. Bill Craig assisted with the original programming and the speech synthesis. Later, Eric Lundquist added real-time speech synchronization with the DecTalk.

At times, Babbling Head has been integrated into the Robot Brain project.

When last it spoke, Babbling Head revealed that it was awaiting some surgery. We look forward to its reappearance and to hearing it sing again.

Did we mention Babbling Head’s popularity? Some notable appearances :

[Text and images originally from http://wiki.therobotgroup.org/wiki/BabblingHead

Venus Project

The Venus Project was formed in the spring of 1989 as an independent cyberart coalition whose members embraced the techno-aesthetic philosophy of a positive human/computer synergy. The expression of this philosophy was the use of technology in playful, educational opportunities for interaction shared with others. The Venus Project members included Bob Nagy, Karen Pittman and John Witham.

VP-1, the first public exhibit designed by the Venus Project, appeared at RoboFest (1989 show at Discovery Hall in Austin, TX).

The exhibit was a computer-mediated interactive environment for producing musical sounds by body movements and for manipulating computer graphics with those sounds.

The participant donned a helmet that actuated MIDI-controlled synthesizer sound module. Pressure-sensitive areas beneath the feet of the participant were also connected to the sound module.

The graphics display was driven by software that changed the output based on the audio pitches and the interrelation of the audio signals.

VP-2 (Sonic Silhouette), the second Venus Project work designed for exhibit at Discovery Hall, was featured in RoboFest 2 (February 1991)

In this installation, body movements were tracked by an overhead video camera and digitized. A graphical interface to the audio synthesizers, in the form of a grid, caused musical sounds to be produced.

This system acted like a virtual instrument that was played by dancing or moving inside the digitized space.

VP-3 (Musicgraphic Hyperinstrument), was designed for the Berzerkwerks installation at the Austin Children’s Museum (August 1991).

This exhibit featured several virtual worlds that the participant could “enter” through the video camera and digitizer.

These worlds, created using the Mandala System authoring software, enabled the user to create sounds, trigger animations, and to paint by moving and “touching” virtual objects.

Lights and fans in the room surrounding the exhibit were also activated by these virtual objects and acted on wind sculptures and other installations in the show.

This exhibit was modified and renamed Video Playscape and remained on display at the museum after the close of the Berzerkwerks show.

Iterations of this exhibit were the top interactive attraction at RoboFests.

Venus Project (VP-3) Mandala System interactive computer graphic scene
Mandala System interactive computer graphic scene from the Venus Project VP-3 (Musicgraphic Hyperinstrument)

VP-4 (Living Systems Interactive Video Environment / L.I.V.E.)

In February 1992, the Austin Childrens’ Museum commissioned the Venus Project artists to create a virtual representation of the human digestive system.

The Mandala System was used to design scenes for the Video Playscape which made an educational game of the process of digestion. It featured an interactive tour of the digestive tract with animations, sound samples, and music.

VP-5 (Performance Interfaces) emerged in April – May 1992. The Venus Project designed and performed with several new virtual interfaces for control of audio synthesizers accompanied by the Sainsott’s Shrinking Robot Heads Band.

The debut performance for the combined organic and inorganic groups was held at X/XX2 Experimental Musical Festival on April 4, 1992. The performance featured an ensemble of six live (organic) musicians as well as the Shrinking Robot Heads Band members.

The interface was used to play synthesizers as the performers moved inside a digitized space.

Venus Project interfaces were also designed to be used in performance at Mayfest in Tulsa, OK and at RoboFest 3 in Austin that year. In both of these events, the interfaces were also to be used experimentally by the audience.