I and the quad A1 had a great time at the FAB16 festival in Somerville this past weekend. The robot got to do a lot of running around, it and I got to meet a lot of new people, and two bands showed up!

Here’s a video of the quad A1 and Spot hanging out trying tricks:

And here’s another one of a “dance off” (kinda) with the School of Honk band. Note that although both robots collapsed at the end of this video, the quad A1 got back up and kept dancing. (Spot wasn’t broken, they just didn’t want to right it when close-ish to people). Thanks to Kathleen and Josh from BD for inviting me into their area and for being such good sports!

The title says it all! Check out the quad A1 and friends there!

Check out the quad A1 and all the mjbots products at the FAB16 festival in Somerville, MA this Saturday August 14th from 10am to 4pm (with a rain date on Sunday).

Weekly Robotics is a great robotics newsletter I follow authored by Mateusz Sadowski. Every week he posts up to date research notes, industry happenings, and great robot videos. Next week, on Thursday 2021-04-23 I’ll be presenting at the sibling “WR Community Meeting” and hosting a live Q&A session. Sign up with the eventbrite link below!

• Weekly Robotics Community Meeting #7 - mjbots with Josh Pieper

Alert!  I’m at Maker Faire Bay Area all weekend in the Mech Warfare area in Zone 2 (May 17-19, 2019 for you time travelers from the future).  Drop by and say hi!

If you were left in suspense last time, yes, the robot can walk!  Getting it to do so in a minimal way was relatively painless.  What I found, which hadn’t happened in earlier iterations, is that many types of dynamic motions would cause the lower leg belts to jump a tooth.  Needless to say, this was nearly universally fatal, as there is no direct position sensing of the lower leg.  This robot is heavy enough that my simulacrum 3d-printed timing belt pulleys just don’t cut it.

As an intermediate forcing function, I’ve been preparing Super Mega Microbot to enter the Mech Warfare event at Maker Faire Bay Area May 17-19 in San Mateo, CA!  The Mech Warfare event is a competition where scale size “mechs” or robots compete with airsoft cannons in a scaled down cityscape.  Teleoperation is allowed, but the human operators are only allowed to see “what the mech sees”, which means driving from a video screen.