MicroPython Forum (Archive)

A number of years ago, I built a bioloid-based quadruped walker robot which I called Roz. Originally controlled using an Arbotix (Arduino-like) board, two years ago I updated it to be controlled with a Beaglebone Black running Python. Programming robots in python is great, but running full-blown linux on small robots is not fun (mainly due to boot time).

Here's a video showing Roz with an Arbotix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6le3z78TK74

And here's a video showing Roz walking under python control:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBNOs9JHqXA

Now that my brother Dave has successfully tweaked the right settings in the UART so the pyboard can talk to Bioloid servos, I'm converting Roz to run MicroPython.

Here's a picture of Roz, with a new head, and one of my custom MicroPython boards mounted:



The wiring and hookup is all done, and now I'm working on porting my IK and control code over to MicroPython...

And here's a video of Roz walking, powered by one of my custom MicroPython boards:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL9w-wTjzeM

This is definitely the first step in what I hope will be a lot of software updates for this robot.

And here's a nicer picture:

Most impressive! What type of sensors are you using in the head? Roughly how many lines of Python are involved?

The sensors in the head are Sharp analog IR sensors, although they are the close-range sensors, and only "see" for 8". I need to swap them out with a set of GP2D12's, which can range out to something like 30".

Total lines of code is 1650 right now, with 691 of those lines being Dave's bioloid bus UART & packet stuff, and the other 959 being robot-level stuff. The IK and Gait code combined is ~400 lines.

- Jon

The movement look really realistic I'm impressed.

So I wonder because you've done the project 2 times right? Using Arduino and uPy.

Which one went smoother? Did you encounter problems in using uPy for such complex applications?

I don't consider this a complex project. I'm just getting started with it.

Using MicroPython is way nicer, mainly because I like Python orders of magnitude more than I like C++. I'm actually an old-time Smalltalk programmer, and Python is as close as I've found to the feel of Smalltalk.

I haven't run into any major problems, mainly because my brother took care of the low-level interfacing to the bioloid bus, so I could concentrate on the robotics part of this project.

Lucky one !

The code for this is available on my Github repository:

https://github.com/JonHylands/roz

It also requires the bioloid interface code from my brother's repo:

https://github.com/dhylands/bioloid3

I did a blog post yesterday showing how I'm starting to use the range finders on the head for scanning:

http://blog.huv.com/2015/12/roz-obstacle-scanning.html