Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

It has a hanger om the OI and gets put on following auton... costs us some time.

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

I will give a couple of answers:

Autonomous: The vest/arm hang on the OI board. At the end of autonomous the operator walks up, puts the vest over hear head (and safety glasses) and slides her arm in to the supports...the velcros the straps. In the meantime the driver starts to move the bot.

Sneezing or something: A concern we had was getting distracted and turning to talk to someone, etc. Just like driving a car, and sneezing, care must be taken. The arm disable button could be pressed on the onset of the sneeze...if the operator had their wits about them. If not...then the robot arm would move the same way the human arm did durign the sneeze....and then would move to the position the human arm was in 'after' the sneeze.

In our pit area and the practice area we set up orange cones around our work cell/area and warned people to not enter the area. We also called 'clear' when the arm was enabled...and completely cleared the area when the turret was to be used.

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

That is really cool. Way to go on safety as well.

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

If she sneezes it autonomously hangs 8 ringers... in the code we call it 'A.Baker'. Getting the accelerometer and gyro to set-up to detect that took hours. Unfortunately, now she only has a raspy cough.

Seriously though, there is an enable/disable button on the handle in her hand as well as buttons to rotate the wrist CW/CCW. FYI... the $60 bionic arm also controls turret rotation.

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

More info.... (Mark and I are playing off each other's posts).....

LEDs on the joystick handle attached to the arm:
- Red only (arm disabled)
- Green only (arm enabled)
- Red and Green (arm enabled and turret enabled)

Buttons:
- enable/disable arm
- enable/disable turret
- rotate wrist left
- rotate wrist right

We looked at using the tophat to control the wrist...but the position of the tophat was not ergonomically 'good'...and we ran out of time to do more work on the arm to make it usable.

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

About the sneezing... I learned to do most things lefthanded. Including eating Wheat Thins with only vertical arm movements to avoid rotating the turret - when I wasn't wearing the arm. And yes, I most often had it deactivated anyway.

After autonomous, it took me about fifteen seconds to get myself completely strapped into the hockey pads (donated by one of the team members as an attachment for the arm). I learned to do it on my own so the driver was free to move the bot for the first 10 seconds of the match - I had three or four seconds of lag time between the buzzer to end autonomous and the activation bell. Not that this came down to any sort of precise art. :)

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

What did you mount the arm to? Football shoulderpads or something? Cut in half? Or did you guys lay your own fiberglass?

-q

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

They are a set of lacrosse pads that are basically unmodified.

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

where did you guys get your potentiometers?
ive been looking and i cant seem to find any that specify that the input from them is through pwm cables

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

Yeah....well...I am not sure that any company would really want to embrace PWMs as a connection standard....

That being said we clipped PWMs and soldered the female ends to the pots.


***Ugly #1*** We use cable bundles to get from the RC up the mast/arm with a DB15 disconnect between chassis and mast. PWM cables are soldered to the DB15 on the chassis. PWM cables are soldered into the cable bundle to connect to the PWM cables soldered to the pots and other sensors.

*** Ugly #2 *** For this human-arm application we used DB15 (game port) to Cat5 cables to modular connectors...to Cat5 cables to the vest....then to modular connectors...back to Cat5 cables..then soldered on PWM cables...to the pots. We wanted the ability to disconect the vest assembly in multiple places therefore the use of Cat5 modular connectors.

and...we are always looking for a better way to manage connections across the bot and also the OI. Suggestions?

We used the pots referenced in this white paper: http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/1743

We bought the pots from Allied Electronics (www.alliedelec.com)....the account exec was VERY helpful and even assisted in getting pots from another supplier when he was short of stock.

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

yeah after a bit more research pwms are not used primarily on pots...

thank you, this is going to make a great after season project :)

we might have time trials to see what we can get accomplished in six weeks.

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

We have a 'white paper', to use the term loosely, though..it is actually yellow due to the team colors, that includes:
- Arm features
- code snippets for arm control, PID, etc.

And we could add in the OI wiring that was done.

Available for the asking.... :cool:

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

could i have this white paper? :D

i am trying to do an easier way to wire the pots to the OI and your designs would be very helpful.

thanks

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

That is really cool. Great job guys. We were going with something like that, but decided to switch to a minature model of the arm instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mF8CKpf-80

Part of that is how far we got on the similar design.

Cool Controls 1189.

Re: 1189 - Human-Bot Arm Control
 

and also here is a pic of the OI



where on here did you wire the pots to? on the ifi site it says that it has 16 analog inputs but i cant see them on here anywhere.

thanks