Tom Servosapien, or How Team NimbRo Hacked/Modded Robosapien's Brain into a PPC

September 18, 2004 at 05:34 AM in

Team NimbRo at the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg in Germany decided to attach a Pocket PC and a LifeView FlyCam to the head of a Robosapien robot, write the software to make him autonomous, and release the instructions and API's for those of you who want to follow in their footsteps (the ability to wield a solder gun like a jedi wields a lightsaber is apparently a prerequisite.)

Guess what? We happen to have a Robosapien, a spare PPC, and a Pretec CompactCamera (which will work too) in the GadgetMadness gadget vault. If DoctorX, or whatever that cool guy who can assemble Media Center PC's in his sleep (you know who you are) will come to our aid, we plan on making our very own Tom Servosapien. After all, he did tip us on this story. Stay tuned.

RoboSapien-API for embedded Visual C++ by Team NimbRo

GadgetMadness Robosapien MechaPimp Video!

Robosapien $89.99 @ ThinkGeek.com

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Current Rating: 2.25 by 8 readers (1="This Sucks, 5="Coolest Thing Ever")

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Reader Comments

birq @ September 18, 2004 06:08 AM

Oh, I'm so there for the "birth of pint-sized autonomous little badass battlebots" party, when it happens. You have to invite me to that. I can wield a solder gun like Jar Jar wields a "meesa".

MrWright @ September 20, 2004 06:42 AM

Second post

rolandog @ September 20, 2004 06:46 AM

Wow, great article. I, for one, would like to welcome our robo-jedi overlords.

Antropical @ September 20, 2004 08:40 PM

I would just like to say that I surrender. Best to give up now, and avoid the rush later.

Interesting though, especially for an avid robot builder such as me. I'm looking foward to my robot servant.

me @ September 28, 2004 06:36 AM

Why the talk about soldering? I just
skimmed the Freiburg documentation
and I see nothing there about soldering.
The PocketPC communicates with the rest
of the robot using infrared, like the
RoboSapiens remote control does.

It is sad that they had to mutilate the
arms to make up for the extra weight. Can
anyone propose a lighter alternative to the
Toshiba e755 they say they used?

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