яobotic Animals, Not just for Disney magic anymore

http://1337robotics.com

Check out Raffes blog

Anyone who has gone to the Burning Festival in Black Rock Desert Arizona, has heard of the Electric Giraffe Rave Raffe, a 17 foot tall engineering marvel who’s creator Lindsay Lawlor describes as a “shy nocturnal creature of the Playa.” You may also have heard of this creature on the Discovery Channel, Wired’s website or a plethora of blogs and websites. Raffe looks beautiful when lit up at night, the glowing LEDS creating a futuristic, carnival like-atmosphere, not unlike the Burning Man Festival itself. The creature is based on Timiya’s mechanical giraffe, a model kit which runs on one R6/AA/UM3 battery and has a total weight of 110 g, a far cry from the upscaled version’s 1600 pounds, This Giraffe runs on a 12 horsepower engine, that burns the cleaner burning propane gas, the engine connects directly to a generator that creates electricity to charge the system’s batteries, the batteries then power a 3 horsepower electric motor that uses only 1.5 horsepower to move the giraffe, making it an electric hybrid. Raffe has 400 hundred watts of audio power with plans for a 2000 watt expansion. LED lights and other mods are constantly being updated and the motor is silent by design, intended to emulate the giraffe’s quite nature. Raffe issues verbal invitations to pet him and touch sensors mounted on the nose and eyebrows cause the giraffe to wag its ears or say things like “that feels nice.”

The man behind this technology and a notable contributor to the electronic giraffe project is Russell Pinnington of 1337 robotics, 1337 meaning leet or“elite” in hacker “leet speak.” Leet Speak being a complete language build around strengthening the geek community and making it even more obscure to outsiders. Pinnington is responsible for the electronics and programming of Raffe, he writes the code for the MAKE controller kit that is the giraffe’s brain.

Things now get a little more technical so for our readers who can stay with us when we get techie, stay on, otherwise you may want to read the Camp Bisco review.

Being interested in CNC machining, I asked Lindz (Lindsay) if any CNC milling had gone into creating Raffe, with all those customized pieces of steel I had to believe something had been custom milled with a CNC router. Indeed a CNC was used. A CNC’s ability to cut and shape exactly what is on a computer screen, from information coming from CAD rendering and CAM software makes CNC a great option for a robotics project where available. Luckily they had a professional to lend his time, as the skill of the machinist directly correlates to the quality of the piece.

CNC and here is his explanation of it.

“We have a precision bearing plate that captures the 360 degree pivoting shoulder bearing that we got from Germany. A pivoting bearing was required due to the flexing steel of the beast as he pulls a whole leg into the air and balances for a brief moment on two legs before falling forward as he walks. We knew the machine would flex a LOT, and we needed "precision slop" as I call it, allowing for flex in some planes of movement and not in others.

Here are pictures of the plates that capture the bearing in a ring of seven bolts. These had to be VERY precise. A CNC mill at low RPM drilled the 1/4 inch steel plates and milled out the large holes for the bearing's race to rest against, while leaving the rest of the bearing exposed. The red, rubber rings are the hand made dust seals that keep the grease in the bearings as well.

The math had to be exact for the bolts to rest against the bearing's outer race and hold it in place. Too tight, it won’t go together, too loose, and dangerous slipping about of the bearing could result, and shatter the race. I was amazed at how perfectly the CNC machine created this part. A professional machinist loaned his time to the project for this item.

This item came out flawlessly and is one of the more subtle and clever features that allows the giraffe (a ton of iron) to walk without tearing itself apart. We're pretty proud of it.”

-the plates and bearing attached with the rubber seals.

-picture of the bearings captured by the two plates. The shape of the plates was milled with a CNC as was the large circle in the center. The exposed area shows that cylindrical rollers, rather then ball bearings are used.

The great thing about projects like this is that they can be ongoing, a sponsorship by Kontron has allowed, for Rave to have a giraffe house to shelter him from the elements, he is also receiving a new coat of white paint. His control board will also be modded to look like that of a space shuttle! Raffe's electronics will also undergo and upgrade and reorganization, of the "guts" of the critter. Like so many other things these days such as object oriented programming, and content management systems, Raffes electronics will be modular and for easy removal and upgrades, everything will be fully encased, seperated and organized. This object oriented approach to information, such as dividing up data among clusters of computers like Google does, is fast becoming the way to look at organizing information, weather it be a database or a mess of wires. separating and oraganizing information by type is a must in the petabyte, silicon age.

Die Cutting on thomasnet for your next robotics project