A little cutie for my office- Microbot Alpha

Someone plopped one of these in my office yesterday afternoon.


It's just the arm, though- no pendants or controller.
The drive amps seem to be built into the base. If I can't get the rest of the system from where ever this one came from, I wonder if I could patch something together...
I've already had the wrist apart and repaired the gripper. The thing is a watchwork of cables and pulleys.

Here's some info from the still existing manufacturer-
http://www.microbotzone.com/Home/tabid/3629/Default.aspx

Photo (above) is hotlinked from this guy's site-
http://www.dvq.com/misc/html/eframe.htm
(click 'Robot' in the top frame to see other photos)

Based on your user name, I'd have guessed such things would be in great supply around your house already.

Hmm... House, not so much. Most of the collection is at the office.
"The collection" is 90% wind-up toys and the like. This tyke is a departure- and closely related to my big boys on the shop floor.

I've never seen one before...

I've wanted it all my life, I now realize.

Heehee I know what you mean!
I'd never heard of them before, either. It seems that they were meant for education use, but found a good niche in medical sample handling.
I think the arm I got came from the garage of an engineer who integrated them for such lab uses. It looks doubtful that I'll get to complete the kit from that source. Next step is to contact the manufacturer and see what they can provide.
I looked on eBay a little, but didn't find anything at all.

Any repairs or renovations clearly need to involve Legos. Or perhaps some Erector/Meccano.

Lego is doing some really mind-bending things with their robot kits. Very advanced stuff. I do enough programming at work, though.
As for Erector sets- check this stuff out- http://8020.net/
We use a fair bit of it at work for quick fixture prototypes.

Lego or Legos?

I had to check.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego

Sorry if I missed a joke.

http://www.lego.com/eng/info/fairplay.asp

Wow, a corporate policy to dictate your sentence structure. That's a new one on me.

I'm not sure which I prefer. I think both ways sound okay to me.

It's a common cause of Internet flame-wars, because in the UK "Lego" is used as an unpluralisable mass noun: "houses made of Lego" like "houses made of wood". In the US, to a large but not invariable extent, Lego is used as a common noun for a single piece: "houses made of Legos" like "houses made of logs". On reaching the official Internet flamewar age of about 15, most people have not yet encountered the other camp's usage, and so maintain that theirs is "correct" despite Lego not being invented in English in the first place (and in fact being a bilingual pun in Latin and Danish).

Peter

Perhaps a more apt comparison is to the word 'brick', since that is what Lego manufactures.

In my experience (US), the usage can go either way. A house built of bricks (multiple building blocks) or built of brick (general building material).

Ok- now that I've written it out it seems a silly point to make. Bricks, logs, blocks, plenty of options all with the same "rules".

Ah well, hooray for variety! It's the differences that make life interesting.

Robots don't care...

It's not uncommon. Lego is a trademark -- not having a policy on usage could result in losing the trademark protection.

Ah- Searches for "Microbot Alpha" didn't lead me anywhere. I've found that the word "Teachmover" gets loads more results.

I managed to find a manual, at least.

I was in Maplin's this weekend and saw this. Although the only reason I bought it was because it's a kit. I'm saving it for once we've finished moving offices and I'm back to struggling to fill the days again....

Sweet! looks very similar to some kits I had my eye on a few years ago from http://www.lynxmotion.com/c-27-robotic-arms.aspx

A complete USB interface is probably the best way to go!

Looks quite neat as a kit to play with. I had a cheapo kit robot arm years ago and whilst it wasn't actually that useful to do anything with, it was enjoyable to build.

Looks like it is a OWI Robot Arm but with USB instead of a control panel. There are a series of videos on YouTube with somebody assembling one.

From what I can tell, the arm uses regular motors instead of servos and there isn't any feedback like optical encoders so you don't know the exact positioning of the arm. Also the drivers are unsigned so you might have issues with it.

Yes, I think the chances of doing any industrial automation with it are slim. But it seemed like a cool toy, and like most things I buy, I'll enjoy the building far more than the actual playing around. A crate full of built but unused Velleman kits are testament to that.

I also like the idea of learning a bit more about driver writing by making a linux USB driver for it.