Month: June 2021

Posted on

Contacting an Author

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am writing in to the authors of the paper on HASEL artificial muscles (hereby referred to as the “HASEL paper” in this post)[1] I covered recently. Let’s get started!

How to Present Myself?

The HASEL paper was dense. I probably understood around 80-90% of it if I’m being generous. It’s an exciting, new technology, but I’m left with questions – questions that might send me looking elsewhere for parts if things don’t work out. I’m writing in.

But how do I present myself? I’m not representing some big company with a finished design; I’m a computer blogger with a dream at best and a wannabe entrepreneur at worst. I have a negligible following, I’ve never bothered to make sure my comments section works, and the default potted cactus theme from 2017 is still staring anyone down who visits.

At the same time, I’m more serious than a random Joe trying to look a little deeper into a novel idea before moving on. I dare say I’m more serious than the average hobbyist looking for a challenging project because I’m already thinking past the “it’s done, that was fun” stage. I want to see my robot out in the world, helping people.

The Letter

To the authors of HASEL Artificial Muscles for a New Generation of Lifelike Robots—Recent Progress and Future Opportunities or whomever it may concern:

I am a computer blogger with three and a half years experience working with Linux. I am presently conceptualizing an untethered robotic system primarily aimed at adept to expert hobbyists. I’ve read your paper, and I believe HASEL actuators show enough promise to warrant serious consideration for my project.

My goal for a version 1.0 is to produce an 18-20 inch tall quadrupedal social robot that doesn’t reach out to the Internet for its basic functions, like speech. By open sourcing the design, users can more easily service their robots and customize them to add character. Adventurous users could assemble their own units from kits containing pre-made artificial muscles, custom circuit boards, and –optionally– 3D printed bones or other parts they can otherwise manufacture at home.

If successful, I dream of the platform being upscaled as large as a miniature horse and serving in a similar capacity to service animals for people with disabilities. If the price can be kept in check, it may even be competitive against the cost of training a new companion animal every number of years. Where an animal might carry a general information card, a robot with an onboard conversation engine could communicate pertinent information in the case of a personal crisis: “My handler is fine. Please leave him alone until he sits up,” “Help! My handler requires XYZ assistance, but is unable to speak.”

A strong point of HASEL actuators I was drawn towards was the possibility of rapid prototyping techniques, but a notable part of the draw vanishes if I cannot prototype shell shapes out of my home lab – even if I expect to need professionally manufactured muscles as I move out of early testing and eventually into release/production. Do you have or plan to make any instructional material on how to develop a schematic which Artimus Robotics can manufacture?

My biggest concern is the operational voltage reported in the paper. Some strategies were proposed to mitigate risk, but are recent developments enough to lower the voltage for a product as described above? If not, do you expect the next 5-10 years will bring sufficient progress?

Shadow_8472
letsbuildroboticswithshadow8472.com

As of writing, I have not sent this letter in e-mail form or otherwise. Only when I sat down to start my write up did I think to instead contact Artimus Robotics (I just realized it’s spelled different than the Greek goddess so no help from spell check). Their site [2] even has a contact page I only laid eyes on last minute as I went to dig up an e-mail address I remember seeing in the HASEL paper.

Takeaway

While attending university, I tried contacting the man behind another exciting robotics technology for a research paper. No response. I don’t want a repeat, and they’ve presented a better method to facilitate first contact. It’s just the information in my now open letter will need to be spread out for the different format. I’ll do a follow up soon if things work out.

Final Question

Have you ever tried writing in to a company?

Works Cited/Mentioned

[1] P. Rothemund, N. Kellaris, S. Mitchell, E. Acome, and C. Keplinger “HASEL Artificial Muscles for a New Generation of Lifelike Robots—Recent Progress and Future Opportunities” Nov. 2020 Advanced Materials vol. 33, issue 19, May 13, 2021 Available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202003375. [Accessed: June 6, 2021]

[2] Artimus Robotics. Accessed: June 28, 2021. Available: https://www.artimusrobotics.com.

Posted on

Project Evaluation: Old Church Laptop

Good morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am going evaluating a “barn find” of a laptop to see if it’s worth resurrecting to limp along for someone another year or two. Let’s get started!

Eyes on the Hardware

The laptop in question was built for my church to run Audio-Visual (AV) when all it needed to do was run PowerPoint on Sabbath mornings. It was replaced after our audio CD ministry, which was hosted on dedicated hardware, was superseded by live streaming services directly to the web.

The laptop has spent the last several years tucked away in a corner cabinet built into the church office protected by its carry case. After a few calls to the other AV team members, I have permission to do with it what I can.

A further inspection of the case yields a CAT .5e Ethernet cord, a USB Wi-Fi antenna (most certainly useless by now), a bag with some software CD’s, and a tiny, little corner pocket has a slideshow clicker/laser pointer combo with an empty slot where its dongle should be stored. Unfortunately, the package is power cord not included.

Inspection of the Case

Low usage during the laptop’s lifetime means the case only has a few scratches on the lid. There’s even a hard disk logo is clearly visible on a rubber pad where it should quickly get worn off under normal use.

The lid is secured by a spring loaded slider and a couple hooks. Opening it up presents me with an old 4:3 screen. Two stickers to the right and left respectively warn the user about upside down USB ports, and advertise the Pentium 4m CPU.

The bottom has a little more information. There’s an empty, plastic pouch for a business card where someone wrote, “[name]/ SDA/ Church/ AV Dept. 7/04.” Another sticker licenses this machine to run Windows XP Home Edition, and the product key is clearly visible. Another sticker gives its serial number with a bar code, and the FCC compliance sticker says it is an A2500L Notebook PC and asks for a 19 volt power supply, 3.42 amps, 65 watts.

I also poked around, inspecting the sides. I recognize a number of USB ports, a VGA connector and a parallel port –each complete with screw holes– separate Phone/Ethernet ports, a DVD drive, and an empty bay where an optional SD card reader would have gone.

The Search For a Power Supply

This right here could kill the project before it even really starts. It’s why I’m even putting this much effort into writing about project evaluation instead of an actual project.

There was nothing in the cabinet where the laptop hid away. In fact, I left it there a couple days when I didn’t find anything looking through the AV booth, though since I’ve brought it home, my father has suggested looking behind the equipment where a mere AV tech used to operating the system wouldn’t think to look.

You never realize just how many standards of voltage consumer electronics use until you look through the myriad of transformers contributing to spaghetti soup where they collect. Each voltage has at least one different size to keep you from frying something.

My father was eventually able to find a 19v power supply, but it’s way lower of an amperage than the laptop calls for. At best, I’m looking at leaving it to charge overnight for an hour or two of work, and that’s assuming the battery is in any good working condition.

Takeaway

I honestly don’t know if you’ve heard the last of this laptop. Without a proper power supply, nothing is happening. The most we’ve gotten in terms of charging/booting is total power loss after displaying an ASUS logo, most likely while loading the BIOS. Otherwise, there’s an orange light that starts blinking when plugged in.

Future potential is mostly in learning on my end. My goal –assuming I can get it running browsing, E-mail, and possibly streaming a video– is to find someone in the church who needs a simple laptop. I’d be putting a lightweight Linux distribution on it. A friend recommended XFCE with a Win95-like aesthetic, and while I might think a 10 clone would be more readily accepted, the older look might afford it more slack, though a quick search landed me looking at a theme called Longhorn Plex I might try to look like its original XP.

In all reality, this thing is 17 years old! I am literally grave robbing here, even if it wouldn’t feel self-conscious being set up in a museum or personal collection.

Final Question

Have you ever pulled in an old laptop, only to find the power cord AWOL?

Posted on

Attempting a Personal Wiki

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today I am trying to set up a personal wiki to understand my own site better. Let’s get started!

Searching for a Wiki

Pick a game, show, or fandom, and chances are you will find a wiki for it — sometimes more. These online subject encyclopedias are normally open for readers to edit, and otherwise need no introduction.

I already knew there existed at least one version of the software free and open source, but Wikipedia has a whole list of them [1]. The table was static [note: only on mobile], so I had to mentally track for process of elimination across categories like open source vs proprietary or even its target audience.

My use case is to make a wiki about my sister’s fanfiction series. She’s built up her own take on the world of Sonic, and we decided it could be fun to learn how to organize elements of her story into a familiar format. If successful, the same process will make it easy for us to grow similar wikis from other stories, like when we’re worldbuilding for a possible role play game.

I landed on pursuing Foswiki [2]. It’s not limited to a single user, it’s free and open source, and it has most or all the features tracked in the comparison cited above. I did not notice at the time, but it expects you to work with Perl, a programming language of which I know little more than the name. I am open to learning, though.

Foswiki Host

For the record, I currently lack a dedicated home server I have complete control over while ButtonMash is on picture scanning duty and my fleet of Pi’s is dealing with unknown issues: either a poorly chosen brand of SD cards or one of the machines going bad. Besides, I was hoping some of you finding this post might be interested in doing this at home, so I wanted to use one of my workstations.

I landed with using DerpyChips. Even though it’s not always the most stable, it is the most readily accessible of my workstations from any point on the home network. I encountered some trouble updating though: a repository in its listings was no longer signed. It wasn’t until the next day of work that I noticed it was just a repository for Celestia, a computerized home planetarium. So far, the issue has been ignored, but it ate up a lot of the time I otherwise would have used towards the main project. In the meantime, I had reached out to three or four places, including the PopOS Matermost chat and the Celestia Discord once I identified the problem.

Apache2

A web site cannot run on bare operating system alone, apparently. There’s an extra layer called a web server. Apache Web Server is a name I’ve heard in relation to the web for a while. I gather it’s a popular choice. It was also mentioned in the installation documentation for Foswiki, and only after I installed it by repository did I notice that it’s only one of a few supported options.

Apache installed smoothly. sudo apt-get install apache2 and Firefox was able to reach the test page for Ubuntu at Derpy’s IP.

My only reservation at this point is a possible mix up between Apache and Apache2. It’s just a version difference, but I have not spotted Apache2 being called out in Foswiki’s documentation.

Takeaway

I fully hoped this would be a one and done project. Once understood and scooted the problem to the side, Foswiki appears more involved than I expected. I don’t want this to become another long-term project, so I may take another look at that list again and see if there’s something geared a little more towards a brother and sister organizing thoughts.

I find it odd that Foswiki doesn’t capitalize their W when most other wikis appear to.

Final Question

How would you use a personal wiki to organize information?

Works Cited

[1] “Comparison of Wiki Software,” Wikipedia. Accessed: June 13, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_wiki_software

[2] Foswiki. Accessed: June 14, 2021. [Online] Available: https://foswiki.org/

Posted on

HASEL Actuators: A First Glance

Good Morning from my Robotics Lab! This is Shadow_8472, and today, I am continuing my research on my design for a personal robot. Let’s get started!

Situation Overview

In my last post on this subject, I introduced my overarching vision for an open source social robot aimed primarily at hobbyists at or around my skill level as of when I first got serious about this project: familiarity with Linux, a little experience with 3D printing, and the perseverance to see it through. This will not a beginner’s project. But that doesn’t mean I can’t plan on lowering the barrier to entry.

When all is said and done and I have my completed plans, any master level hobbyist is more than welcome to assemble one resistor by capacitor by electrode should he see fit. That doesn’t mean I won’t be able to arrange already cut or assembled circuit boards for those who need it. I might also arrange kits for people who just want to assemble their own robot from parts, and I can even possibly open up orders for fully assembled units.

HASEL Actuators

A major concern I’m designing around is cost. Motors are loud, bulky, and as expensive as they can be precise. Artificial muscles can typically be made for pennies on the dollar while offering a lot more design flexibility. They are, however, an overall younger technology.

While there are multiple possible designs floating around, I’ve been reading up on Hydraulically Amplified Self-healing ELastomeric actuators (HASEL), a relatively new technology within the relatively new field of artificial muscles. Imagine a baggie partially filled with oil. Paint or otherwise affix some flexible electrodes to magnetically squish together when a high voltage is applied, and you get the basic idea. The oil pushes out the sides of the baggie, causing the whole thing to contract lengthwise. There have been multiple generations of designs, each with its own improvements, drawbacks, and studies [1]. It makes for some very dense reading when authors use big words to talk about all of them at once.

My goal for right now is to start prototyping this month. Even if I don’t have a high voltage power supply to work with by then, I’m bound to learn something.

Citation Needed

To date, when I’ve needed to credit a work, I’ve listed a name in my text and thrown in a link. Citation was often my least favorite part of writing a paper, but I’ve decided that if I’m looking to be a little more serious about this blog, I really should start using appropriate citations when referencing things.

As I was finishing up this post, I looked up the format. School will teach MLA and APA as a given and Chicago if they’re up for some variety. It’s all a matter of what standard is being used in the field you’re writing for. From now on, I shall be using the IEEE standard as I am writing for the field(s) of technology and computer science.

Of note, the work cited in this post is actually one I’ve been digesting since at least early March, before it’s inclusion in a journal last month. I’ve accessed it multiple times, but I haven’t kept track of it. My father finally made a hard copy this week, so I’m “accessing” it from there in terms of citation.

In all reality, I don’t have a teacher marking me down for imperfect citations. The real goal is to let you guys know enough so it should be easy(TM) find whoever I’m talking about, even if a link dies. I’m also limited by what I can coax WordPress into doing, so proper indentation is not happening any time soon. I tried it. It broke the brackets.

Final Question

My post lengths vary quite a bit. About how long do you think I should aim for in terms of word count?

Work Cited

[1] P. Rothemund, N. Kellaris, S. Mitchell, E. Acome, and C. Keplinger “HASEL Artificial Muscles for a New Generation of Lifelike Robots—Recent Progress and Future Opportunities” Nov. 2020 Advanced Materials vol. 33, issue 19, May 13, 2021 Available: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202003375. [Accessed: June 6, 2021]

Privacy Policy