Freescale Semiconductor's two-legged robot (FSLBOT) and a controller board lets engineers, students, and even hobbyists experiment with the robot's four servos and many sensors. Under software control, the robot will move and respond to touch, motion, vibration, tilt, and other external stimuli, depending on the sensors attached to it.
The four servos let the robot tilt over a bit on one foot and then rotate on that leg. Then when the robot moves back to the vertical position, software repeats the process on the other leg. Thus, the robot "walks" across a surface. Four AA batteries underneath the TWR-MECH controller board provide power, and the board's 32-bit MCF52259 ColdFire MCU handles the sensor inputs and servo-control PWM outputs.
Freescale Semiconductor's 2-legged robot (FSLBOT) and controller board lets engineers, students, and even hobbyists experiment with the robot's four servos and many sensors. (Source: Freescale)
Users can add four more servos if they want to position sensors, actuate a home-made grabber, or do something else. The TWR-MECH board will work in a Freescale Tower "stack," and its position on the robot lets you add other Tower-compatible boards above it. Add-on boards provide analog-to-digital converters, displays, keyboards, Ethernet, wireless communications, and so on.
A robot costs $199 and comes with a dialect of BASIC provided by CPUStick. Before you say, "Good grief, not BASIC," let me explain. Programmers use a PC as a terminal to write code that uses the StickOS editor, compiler, debugger, and memory "flasher" already installed in the robot. I have a robot so I can put it through some tests and then report on my experiences in another Mechatronics Zone blog entry. Of course, if you don't like BASIC, you can use Freescale's CodeWarrior tools to program the MCU in C/C++.
Ann, one of the many challenges facing engineers is staying current with new and emerging technologies. The Freescale TWR Robotics development platform is a cost effective training tool for learning evolving technologies.
You're right mrdon. This would be especially useful if you could swap out the parts as they become obsolete or to learn different current technologies.
My wife had daVinci robotic surgery this past January and was walking about within a day. Using teleoperating machine control techniques and haptics, doctors are able to perform surgeries that are less invasive because of these highly accurate robotic machines. In addition to Parallax offering BoeBot kits that are great for STEM projects, they also provide a BoeBot shield that can be attached to an Arduino as well.
Good comment about the Parallax BoeBot. I just saw the new board for Arduino shields. That gives students and teachers much flexibility in what and how they teach.
Hi, Jack. You probably want to keep the TWR-MECH board for all experiments because it provides eight servo outputs and can accept two add-on sensor boards. I have the LFDA7455 3-axis accelerometer board and the LFDA3110 magnetometer board inserter on my robot, so it can provide accurate magnetic headings. The TWR-MECH board has an edge connector that ensures compatibility with other Freescale Tower boards, so you can "stack" on other boards you want to experiment with or test. The TWR-MECH board has touch-sensor inputs and plenty of digital I/O pins, too. I'll have more to report later this week.
Jack, that's a really interesting concept--parts specified and installed so they can be swapped out to update the robot or try out different technologies. Jon, was there any hint of this possibility from Freescale?
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