This is a video of my Futaba RBT-1 Robot performing a demo routine.

In the video you can see that I am controlling the body position of the robot using an accelerometer. The accelerometer will soon be attached to the robot and ultimately help with balance calculations.

This is the new body shell for my quadruped robot. I’ve also added some wiring sleeves to tidy up the cabling. One of the legs is dragging a little as the screws had come slightly loose. But now the robot is pretty much built I can finally start to concentrate on getting the walking gait smoothed up. I also need to think about what type of sensors to add for 360 degree object awareness.

This video shows Q-P2 running a Creep Gait routine.

I think I need some kind of rubber tip on the end of the legs as you can see him slipping on the wooden floor. I might even add some pressure sensors to the tips so I can work out feet position over rough terrain … hmmmm …

This Creep Gait is basically modeled on a cat’s creeping motion. That is to say at any given time one leg is lifted and moving forward while the remaining three are gradually moving back. The problem with getting a four legged robot to walk smoothly is maintaining a stable tripod with the three legs on the ground. To compensate for any loss of balance the center of gravity can be shifted to sit inside the tripod by moving the body side to side. I have not added any balancing at this stage as the position of the trailing feet just about encapsulate the center of gravity. However, I will probably add a bit of swing in the near future to make the creeping even more stable, especially if I want to get the robot to walk over an uneven surface.

Just a quick video demonstrating my robot doing some basic ‘press-ups’ using an IK routine. Finally got my servos sorted -- using 8xHS-645MG and 4xHS-485HB. Next I have to start working on a smooth creep gait sequence …

The chassis is built from Rigid PVC foamboard (thanks for the tip Innerbreed). This material is amazing for prototyping – it took me a whole two hours to design and cut out the two chassis components and the four end leg pieces. However, this is still a prototype and I when I’m happy with the design I want to get some black anodized aluminium parts laser cut instead.

I opted to use a Dagu ‘Red-Back’ Spider controller as I am already familiar with the Arduino and Processing environment. The board is based on an ATmega1280 MCU and can drive up to 48 servos. It’s nice to have everything all on one board with loads of room left for adding sensors etc.

Again – I used LynxMotion black anodized aluminium servo brackets to create the leg sections. There are 8 x Hitec HS-645 MG servo’s for the Coxa and Femur joints and 4 x crappy TowerPro 995MG for the Tibia servo’s. But as soon as my robot tin is full I will replace the TowerPro with another 4 x HS-645 – as they are the ultimate!

The whole concept and design is ‘heavily’ based around jezek68′s quadruped robot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWP3RnYa_tw. And if I can get my QP-2 to walk anywhere nearly as gracefully as you can see in that video then I’ll be a very happy man. I’ve also been studying gait generation algorithms and lots of AI and mathematics over the last year so hope to have some pretty cool things to show over the coming months.

http://www.itchyinteractive.com

There is also a blog that I keep up to date while developing new products.

Poker Yourself is an Open Feint enabled Texas Hold ‘Em style poker solitaire game for the iPhone.

Featuring online leaderboards, tons of achievements and customization, Poker Yourself will keep you amused for hours.

Features

• Unlock achievement awards using OpenFeint.
• Biggest Banks leaderboard and Historic Highs using OpenFeint.
• Supports portrait and landscape autorotation.
• Compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch.
• Battery friendly.

You can check it out here: http://www.itchyinteractive.com/poker-yourself/

Needless to say this wasn’t an ideal situation – especially as I was tasked with applying a new SEO friendly look and feel to the site. It was decided that a complete rewrite/structuring of the code base was needed before we could go forward with any new functionality, design, products etc.

Code Igniter was chosen as the PHP framework with which to build on. This is an excellent lightweight PHP framework with support for data models, views and controllers (MVC). We also chose to use Smarty as a templating engine to further seperate the view logic from the business logic.

There has been a heavy emphasis on applying SEO techniques to improve our search engine ranking. Along with page specific meta data and valid XHTML, a new SEO friendly URL structure was developed supporting the 16 languages.

Key areas of development:

• PHP & Code Igniter framework
• Smarty templating engine
• Javascript / AJAX
• Internationalization – 16 languages
• SEO, SEO, SEO !!

Visit the site: http://www.boatshop24.com

The idea was to have a site that contains news items written by the people for the people primarily living and working in Brighton and Hove area.

Key areas of development:

• Plugin Development
• Events
• Social Networking (Twitter/Facebook Connect integration)
• SEO

The GabFire NewsPro theme was used as the basis for style – with considerable modification to allow for required functionality. The BHFP logo was provided by a designer – I was responsible for styling the rest of the site to fit with the logo colour scheme.

Visit the site: http://www.brightonandhovefreepress.co.uk