A new release of the OpenWrt-Yún (the Linux distribution for the Arduino Yún) is out. So, you probably want to upgrade your Yún board to benefit from the latest fixes and improvements. The purpose of this tutorial is to help you safely install the new version of the OpenWrt-Yún. We assume you are familiar with the basics of the Yún. Otherwise, we highly encourage you to first read our tutorial on getting started with the Yún.

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Usually, we issue a Virtual Machine (VM) with ROS preinstalled for each ROS release. This time, we decided to issue two VMs for ROS Indigo: a 32 bits version and a 64 bits one. Depending on the amount of resources you are willing to allocate to the virtual machine, you pick one version or the other. The 32bits variant requires only 1GB RAM and 1 CPU core. The 64 bits VM targets hosts with more resources. It is set to ...

Give the maker community a board with computing power and IO ports and you’ll get a robot not before too long. This already happened in the Arduino community. We eventually got the Arduino Robot which even has its own competition now. The Raspberry Pi community is walking down the same path with many projects related to robotics. A notable project is the PiBot (see Videos 1 and 2). Besides the Raspberry Pi board, this two-wheeled segway-like robot embeds a bunch ...

There is no doubt that the future of robotics is 3D printing and open-source license for both software and hardware. Such robots are already a reality as we had already reported. This group of alternatives to Nao the humanoid from Aldebaran Robotics has grown a little more bigger with advent of Jimmy (see Videos 1, 2 and 3). Jimmy can walk fast and have smooth movements, at least for upper limbs. He also comes with voice synthesis (as demoed in ...

This is a continuation of our series on interesting stuff we saw at innorobo 2014. This time, the focus is on the turtlebot, the robotic friend of so many ROS fans. At innorobo there were some cool demos featuring hacked versions of the turtle. Some students stacked the structure of many turtlebots on a single one (see Picture 1). Others built a custom platform for a turtle bot that carriers sweets offered to visitors (see Picture 2). This sets the ...

It’s now our tradition to issue virtual machines with ROS pre-installed. We have already done it for ROS Fuerte and for ROS Groovy. Today it is ROS Hydro’s turn. We have chosen to stick with Ubunutu 12.04. (Precise). This is because 12.04 is an LTS version, which means Long-Term Support. The Ubuntu community will be maintaining it for 5 years. The ROS Hydro virtual machine comes in a single file .ova of approx. 3.7GB. You can launch it using VirtualBox, ...

• Part 1: Mechanical Design Basics.
• Part 2: Balancing the Elevator.
• Part 3: Electronics (optocoupler, H-Bridge, and more).
• Part 4 (current): Software to control the Arduino.

In this last part, we will be describing the Arduino software that controls our Lego elevator. But, let’s first define the desired behavior. As we have described in the part dedicated to the electronics, our circuit provides two push-buttons. One is supposed to make the elevator go up, and the other is for ...

One of the challenges that thinkers have been facing for decades is defining intelligence. Without such a definition, it’s hard to measure intelligence or to make truly intelligent robots. In his TED talk (see Video below), Alex Wissner-Gross introduces an equation that is supposed to provide a concrete, yet general answer. Wissner-Gross defines intelligence as the ability to maximize future options. This is related to the concept of entropy well known in physics. Indeed, entropy is a measure of the ...

• Part 1: Mechanical Design Basics.
• Part 2: Balancing the Elevator.
• Part 3 (current): Electronics (optocoupler, H-Bridge, and more).
• Part 4: Software to control the Arduino.

In the first two parts of this series, we have introduced the mechanics of our Lego-based elevator and we discussed how to balance it to lift some load. Today, we will be discussing the connection between the Lego Mindstorms' motor and touch sensors with an Arduino board. Lego Components Characteristics First things first, ...

Wanna learn how to make mobile robots? This free online course entitled “Control of Mobile Robots” is for you (see Video 1). The tutor is Dr. Magnus Egerstedt, a Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. For 7 weeks, he will be introducing concepts from control theory, and how to map them onto an actual physical platform. In addition, an introduction into microcontrollers, mechatronics, and electronics will be given so that, by the end of the course, ...