How this Robot Climbs up Stairs

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Жыл бұрын

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I found various robots on KZfaq that can go upstairs, of course including Boston Dynamics Spot Mini. My openDog project isn’t really ready for that though, even though it can walk over lumps of wood. I also have these bends in my stairs which means there’s limited turning space in two places, so it’s going to need to be something much smaller.
I came across a few tracked robots and robots with multiple wheels on pivots so they can just drive up stairs. These look good on test steps, but they’d need upscaling significantly to get up actual stairs which tend to be larger and quite steep.
Then I found a stair cleaning robot which splits itself into three vertical sliding sections to lift itself up on each step. The middle section has four wheels to hold it stable, and it also looks like it has omni-wheels so it can slide sideways to clean each step as it goes.
This seems like quite a good design, although the stairs it’s climbing are fairly deep so all three sections can fit on one step. My stairs are a lot shallower than that which means the robot would need to be much thinner, and the middle section would be much less stable when it lifts the back or front up.
So I’m going to adapt this design with an extending section that will allow it to span three steps at once to keep it stable.
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Пікірлер: 385

@jamesbruton Жыл бұрын

Join my DISCORD! discord.gg/fc6MedG7eW INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/xrobotsuk TWITTER: twitter.com/xrobotsuk MASTODON: fosstodon.org/@XRobotsUK

@boonjabby Жыл бұрын

You could make the weight shift automatically depending on which linear motor you enable? I.e. moves forward before moving rear wheels etc.

@RossBobby Жыл бұрын

Camera bot doing a great job holding the camera!

@danielf3623 Жыл бұрын

Got a little seasick at the end, maybe need a bit more damping.

@kittguy Жыл бұрын

It does a good job, however needs more damping indeed. Switching point of interest instead of accurately following it is what's needed. And personally I'm used to a signature steady wide open shot with a lot of machinery in the frame. Change is not always good. A lot of videos today are dynamic and shot from a handheld cam. James style stands apart and that is good IMO.

@victoriage Жыл бұрын

@@danielf3623 Same, at the end it was a bit too much haha

@daftbence Жыл бұрын

@@kittguy And another bunch of videos are filmed on a tripod, with wide shots. James' style wasn't special at all, in fact a robot filming him IS a special style he needs. Just needs some tuning, that's all.

@kittguy Жыл бұрын

@@daftbence Solid point actually, I haven't thought of it this way. 👍

@Nobe_Oddy Жыл бұрын

It's a VERY good machine to carry a quite massive load and for keeping it level and stable. But for it carry you a beer while you're feeling lazy... well I think it would be warm by the time it got there lol. You did mention that it was overly complicated, and I agree... for SIMPLE tasks. But it really is the perfect design for what it was based on (cleaning the stairs)

@DrWhom Жыл бұрын

brits drink their beer warm anyway

@TetraTimboman Жыл бұрын

If I were to do this project, I would cheat and mount a track on the wall that the robot could attach to and drive itself up the wall like one of those stair-lift-chair things. Or attach and detach itself to an installed winch or crane. That would only help for a home use that's planned ahead of time like that - not really as robust as a solution as this robot that could go up many different types of stairs. EDIT 12:32 in the video he has the same idea haha I wrote this comment before finishing the vid

@esnevip Жыл бұрын

He's English, warm beer is the go.

@davidgustavsson4000 Жыл бұрын

If anything, there's a risk he'll have to drink his ale cold.

@omnianti0 Жыл бұрын

instead of 3d printed part for ads it was more struddy to use only aluminum parts and make a mini fridge as counter mass

@DavidMeggers Жыл бұрын

That worked so much better than I was anticipating. Excellent results

@theolane5400 Жыл бұрын

The new camera rig seems like it's working out great, but with this project, because you've already added the 2kg weight shifting element, why not just use two sets of balancing wheels and a single actuator between them?

@segue2ant395 Жыл бұрын

Funny - I had the opposite thought - since it's using 6 wheels, why have a shifting mass when you could just add a static mass to the middle section? :P

@DJ-kx4en Жыл бұрын

i think a servo with a stability plate at each set of wheels would assist in this if needed

@dadgood9729 Жыл бұрын

This is what I imagine a stair climbing Dalek would look like. Pretty interesting design though.

@lordofthe6string Жыл бұрын

What would be super cool is if someone could make like a rail system around a house that bots can attach to and ride around. For the stairs the rail could go up a wall and then across the ceiling out the way.

@CorvanEssen Жыл бұрын

Gotta love the camera work 👍

@benjidaniel5595 Жыл бұрын

Amazing. I’d love to see an autonomous version of this that can go up and down. But also excited to see the Roomba stairlift!

@willierants5880 Жыл бұрын

So very cool, well done James and thanks for what you do for the Robotics community and STEM learning in general.

@sbiecoproductions6062 Жыл бұрын

CAMERABOT is doing a great job man. i think you're the only one i know off on youtube to have that. brilliant

@oldestnerd Жыл бұрын

Besides being educational, your videos are always fun to watch. The music for this one was perfect.

@rudyplayz20 Жыл бұрын

Love the multiple different types of pullies and different engineering designs in this. On a quick note you should try to use mecanum wheels, they give lots of control when used right and you can go in almost any direction you want!

@redheadsg1 Жыл бұрын

Instead of sensor, limit switch for hitting side of the stairs is probably easier to implement.

@bluemamba5317 Жыл бұрын

Maybe some problem though with that fuzzy carpet

@MatthewHoworko Жыл бұрын

@@bluemamba5317 Maybe a limit switch with a bigger bumper?

@eekee6034 Жыл бұрын

I'm pretty sure sensors were limit switches when I was learning robotics back in the 80s. There were infra-red sensors too, but there's nothing wrong with an, *ahem* _simple touch sensor_ AKA limit switch. :)

@blue_leader_5756 Жыл бұрын

New camera guy is really putting in the work

@christianfrandfors6258 9 ай бұрын

Brilliant! As a proof of concept you've created a lift for elderly or handicapped that doesn't need rails and is portable. Truly brilliant!

@MalcySP Жыл бұрын

Could you make the counter weight automatically balance the robot to remove a few steps from the climbing sequence?

@sgsax Жыл бұрын

Always enjoy seeing your solution to hese problems. Adding a payload area seems like it might get dicey. You're already fighting balance issues. Seems like figuring out additional weight distribution could be a challenge. Thanks for sharing!

@boonjabby Жыл бұрын

Hey Jim, I'm still loving the autonomous camera man 😉

@ZenMountain Жыл бұрын

Fantastic, thank you!

@aaalll2513 Жыл бұрын

Awsome! Great build!

@electronic7979 Жыл бұрын

Excellent project 👍

@ZenHulk Жыл бұрын

I love it.... Glad were back to awesome robots..

@cursed_cats5710 Жыл бұрын

A few weeks ago I was thinking about the same idea, designing a segmented stair climbing robot. Nice to see someone doing it.

@SprocketN Жыл бұрын

Really good explanation of the problem and your solution 👍

@3ne2nr4life 9 ай бұрын

This is an awesome build...

@UbuntuBirdyMovies Жыл бұрын

I love your soundtrack!

@PhG1961 Жыл бұрын

Really cool video and what an amazing 3D printers ! Mouth watering...

@dumbtex6107 Жыл бұрын

I gotta say I switched to Onshape about a year and a half ago when I switched to Linux and coming from fusion I gotta say I love it and I love to see them sponsoring you

@actualRocketScientist 7 ай бұрын

You make it look so easy. You must have a ton of experience. Wish I could learn from you in person

@ReneVaeli Жыл бұрын

Yeees! The stair roomba is coming! Thank you!

@p838sfan Жыл бұрын

I look forward to your post amazing job again. Thanks

@ethansimmons82 Жыл бұрын

Love the dynamic camera!! Also, your content is pretty dope

@edwinsilvestrequitianrodri8742 Жыл бұрын

Excelente work... Greetings from colombia.🎉

@patprop74 Жыл бұрын

Quite the accomplishment James.

@danielleohallisey4218 Жыл бұрын

Bold choice on the new music!

@Will_Huff Жыл бұрын

Excellent!

@paulmeynell8866 Жыл бұрын

Great video thanks

@garagemonkeysan Жыл бұрын

Cool video. Looks like you got the robot camera rig working. Nice! Mahalo for sharing! : )

@MaxBrainDevices Жыл бұрын

Love the robot camera Is doing a great job

@shazam6274 Жыл бұрын

Impressive! James does in weeks what industry does in many months and universities take years to accomplish.

@fatso8437 Жыл бұрын

🤣 You think a university would only take "years"? 😂😂 An academic would sit on a problem like for his/her/its entire career. And in that time he/she/it would build a medium size research group, obtain squillions in taxpayer funded grants to fund said group, reach full professor relatively early compared to a more esoteric academic colleague and then spend the rest of his/her/its career dining out on his/her/its one pony trick without any of his/her/its sponsors ever really achieving a commercially viable product. Even more sadly he/she/it will successfully supervise higher degrees and they too will follow in his/her/its path at his/her/its institue or some other. And so and so on and so on. 🤣😂🤣

@qwicy Жыл бұрын

Love the content. My first thought on stabilization was legs/pylons to extend forward or back (similar to a light crane or boom lift), which would maybe be more complicated but less tipsy... Props - this channel is an inspiration.

@TFlorian Жыл бұрын

smart design !

@siyuanng8348 Жыл бұрын

i appreicate the background music during the build montage!

@liamkelly3583 Жыл бұрын

Aargh! he always finishes projects that I am working on before I do

@DoctorZombo Жыл бұрын

But can you make stairs that climb robots?

@gatorbeug8059 Жыл бұрын

Next joke?

@Madpegasusmax Жыл бұрын

nice automatism . You can also try triangular wheels (one wheel on each vertices), all three powered by a central sprocket , and the triangle turns and grips . Like a powered climbing stairs cart

@deeiks12 Жыл бұрын

I see you use your camera robot for filming now. Thats pretty awesome that you get something really useful out of your inventions as well from time to time.

@abdujemal1872 Жыл бұрын

you are underrated engineer. woow I m bafed

@AliasnodeFP Жыл бұрын

One of these days we're going to see you make a 3D printed full mech/Gundam suit.

@vaisakhkm783 Жыл бұрын

enitre video i was thinking of doing this to a rumba, and then you said it.... can't wait for that one... :)

@withered_dragon_head Жыл бұрын

Loved the new vid, cam bot is working great! I miss the old 3d print music though.:(

@andiralosh2173 Жыл бұрын

Nicely made as always! I think with mechanical switches tho, you could double the motor use, rather than simply using the main motors one at a time

@oml81mm Жыл бұрын

If you can find it have a look at the British Army's "wheelbarrow" from the 1980s. It is an EOD robot that carries tools and can negotiate stairs no problem. It uses tracks and has a hull that slides fore and aft for centre of gravity control. Well done on this design...

@peter360adventures9 Жыл бұрын

Awesome.

@rorywilson7013 Жыл бұрын

not going to lie but I use Onshape and it is pretty good for most applications including 3D printing

@526andress Жыл бұрын

👏👏👏 que gran proyecto

@jacquesb5248 Жыл бұрын

interesting project well for starters how about acceleromter(?) in the middle so it can calculate tip forwards and backwards for balance, simple switches in front on both side for step placement.

@murraymadness4674 Жыл бұрын

Thank you for your video, as I also need to make a 'scooter' that can go up stairs, and I am thinking of using a segway type device that has large diameter wheels and you can shift your weight forward. It needs to go faster than you can do it yourself with your legs or it won't be useful....It would be great if you could figure this out. The track system might work if it has large diameter more like a wheel. Cheers, Jack btw, a simpler method is to fire a hooked cable to the top of the stairs and just winch yourself up, doesn't need anything but a single winch and some wheels. Can go back down too. And very quickly too if you don't mind some bouncing.

@ajeethsuryash5123 Жыл бұрын

Awesome job man. One suggestion. Instead of shifting weight, you can use flywheels. You can control their speed and direction to adjust the angular momentum. I think it will be comparatively simple and compact.

@easyBob100 Жыл бұрын

At least, I think you can automate the stair climb with 1 sonar sensor on the front: You still have control of the driving of course. You can drive it up to a step, and hit a button that will start the stair climbing (maybe with the same button to stop the auto-climb so you can take over too). The program will first make sure it's close enough to the step, maybe even bumping into the step. It will then raise the front section until the sensor doesn't detect a close object. It then drives forward a set distance, stopping if the sensor gets too close to the next step (if there is one). I'm not going to write out the whole thing, but I think you can get the idea for the algo from this. Just one sensor needed! :)

@gucu Жыл бұрын

In order to automate, can you simply detect the first stair, input the length and height of each tred and then let it run?

@AvivMakesRobots Жыл бұрын

It's not the robotics I'm impressed by, it's the time to finish that is amazing.

@patrickhurley7029 Жыл бұрын

Hi Jim! Love your creations! The plastic they're made out of remind me of my 90s childhood for some reason. 1:54am in NY here, cheers!

@stevenschmelling5597 Жыл бұрын

Great video. And I can totally see why you went with this style of stair climbing. It is simple and realitvley stable. But with your previous work with balancing robots I wondered if you had considered a design based on Dean Kamen's I-bot?

@patricklepoutre Жыл бұрын

Great ! You should add this mass moving system on your useful robot so he can actually lift heavier objects without balancing problems.

@kevinmcnamara7897 Жыл бұрын

Fantastic! 🤖

@ExplainingComputers Жыл бұрын

Fantastic as always. I thought that seven minutes to get up the stairs was quite impressive. :) A few weeks back I thought that your motion camera rig was another amazing project. However, when you use it now, there are parts of the video (like the closing section here) where I have to look away as they make me fill quite ill very quickly -- the mimicking of a drifting hand-held camera with no stabilization is too good! :) But this may be just me.

@AwesomeBrixx Жыл бұрын

Great video! I had a thought though, and I'm not sure if I'm missing something (in which case, please correct me), but if you have the moving mass that can change where it balances, why couldn't it be just two segments? Like, it puts one segment up one step, shifts weight onto that one, lifts the back segment up, transfers weight onto that one, etc.

@Unmannedair Жыл бұрын

Not bad for a first step... I'll see myself out now. In all seriousness though, it reminds me of the way a baby climbs stairs. Functional, effective, but very slow. Very interested to see what else comes out.

@PanoptesDreams Жыл бұрын

For a "proof of concept" or version 0 it's amazing!

@georgeindestructible Жыл бұрын

If the compartment of the battery can move to accommodate for the change of weight in the direction needed, that's a huge win for efficiency. Now imagine being able to do this with more than one battery separately for even more control and capacity.

@ecophreak1 Жыл бұрын

No wonder the daleks just settled on levitation as the easy solution to stairs

@LoneWolf0648 Жыл бұрын

a couple rails with a section of teeth in the middle would make it easier for a small robot to quickly climb the stairs. depending on size you could get it to corner on the rail and even a weak, slow climb would still probably be faster than all the stop and go with this bot. this robot is amazing in its own way and if it was only a step or two it would be fine but 7 min is a while and then you need a good bit of sensors to keep it from just driving off the edge.

@lynnwilliam Жыл бұрын

I would love to see more Robot Dog stuff, I think you can keep pushing it

@jaimeeoww Жыл бұрын

this is very cool and i love the solution but i think it needs to go FASTER!!! i hope next episode is a faster version. you make cool stuff 😊

@RupertBruce Жыл бұрын

Objective achieved. Nice.

@DorifutoRabbit Жыл бұрын

Your builds were already impressive with the BB8 but this is very cool.

@maxtorque2277 Жыл бұрын

I think it only needs to drive the front pair of wheels when the middle pair is at the same level as those front pair. This means you could simplify by having a simple gear or friction drive that takes the drive off the middle pair and supplies it to the front pair when they are at the same level?

@davidvwilliamson Жыл бұрын

ultrasound worth a try for the automation problem? you could have lots of transducers everywhere measuring everything. it might go really fast

@matthewray6008 Жыл бұрын

Your robot camera man is still killing it. Good job James, you're the best evil scientist on KZfaq.

@jamesbruton Жыл бұрын

Thanks, although opinions are mixed ;-)

@JacksWailerTV Жыл бұрын

awesome work!!! The way down is difficult - take Lego Train much easy...

@KylePapili Жыл бұрын

Such a cool concept! Well executed too. I'm curious if you think it can make it down the stairs in its current form? Also a stair-lift robot that can interface with other robots would be amazing. Retrieval / delivery robots on each floor plus the stair lift robot to take a mass from one level to another. What an awesome home-automation system you'll have soon!

@neb_setabed Жыл бұрын

I was thinking you could mount a rail To the wall just have it extended out and enter so and have the robot be able to connect to that and drive up the rail… who knows if that would work though. And in theory that should be able to make it down the stairs it just goes in reverse

@dongningprc Жыл бұрын

This is an AMAZING project! Can the robot go downstairs? I think it can, just reverse the steps should work

@LLJW4 Жыл бұрын

haha new printing music is great :P

@TheRealStructurer Жыл бұрын

Cool build but guess the beer will not be cold once it arrives 😉 Thanks for sharing 👍🏼

@boonjabby Жыл бұрын

Imagine getting your morning coffee from this.

@maximthemagnificent Жыл бұрын

While a cogged track would certainly be more practical, it would be neat to see how stealthy it could be. The underside of a hand rail, perhaps. Or, more fancifully, maybe steel spots in the wall a magnet could grip.

@bengelman2600 Жыл бұрын

I keep forgetting you're using the robot camera operator. Awesome.

@ryanengle9725 Жыл бұрын

I know for a FACT you used your camera bot and damnnnnnnn that lil homie was build by a pro cause it didn’t miss a shot. Love the video have a great day!!

@ethanlappin3401 Жыл бұрын

Crazy

@Gunbudder Жыл бұрын

robot cameraman john is legitimately really good. its a good handcam feel. John has been replaced!

@amihaiba Жыл бұрын

What about 3 vertically sliding links with each having a track so when the first link encounter the stair the track will pull it up while the rest will press it to the stair so that it has traction, and once its goes up the next one climb etc.

@inh415 Жыл бұрын

How about a hopping / pogo stick robot that can hop up the steps? Would need some kind of active damping on the beer carrying arm though. Sounds right up your alley with some reaction wheals and or gyro's for stability and inducing forward motion and rotation etc

@fatso8437 Жыл бұрын

Wouldn't you simply drink the beer before climbing the stairs? And what is so important at the top of the stairs anyway? Tell her to come down, you're too busy watching the cricket