Quadcopters are very popular these days, but one can also increase number of motors to a multicopter.

One can also make it big, like these Germans did. Simple, yet amazing.

A new way of harvesting sun energy has been developed and is was presented at Ted a few days ago. This amazing technology is transparent which means you can generate energy from the windows of your house! You can even cover an entire electric car with this stuff.

Head on over to TED.com and watch the presentation

Brain controlled car.

Radio controlled flying sourcer.

Modular and flexible robot.

How Festo Bird came to life.

Smallest Quadcopter.

Ship (metal) boarding robot.

Efficient and precise movements for lasercutter robot.

Robot designed for tree climbing, notice the additional weight.

Vehicle using ground effect for efficient movement.

Hybrid legged and wheeled robot.

Robotics is as complex as a discipline gets, being equal parts creativity, engineering, mathematical talent, and a range of scientific knowledge that enables individuals or teams to create robots – artificial constructs designed to complete menial tasks. But what potential benefits can they have, and how difficult is it to pursue a career in robotics?

For starters, the advantages of using robots instead of human beings is quite clear, for two reasons. They are less likely to make mistakes when it comes to menial, repetitive tasks that go on for hours, and although this is slowly pushing menial labour in manufacturing out into the job market, it does have advantages, as jobs can be created elsewhere and we can begin to phase out manual labour that can be somewhat unsatisfying for many individuals.

Now, whether you’re a scientist or a partypoker.com pro, you’ll know that when it comes to exploring unknown territory, either terrestrial or otherwise, we’ve begun to rely on robots rather than human beings. Not only does this avoid putting anything living at risk, it also means we can push further and further than ever before. From minefields to Mars, it’s enabled us to explore and make safe areas that we could previously never experience without putting people at risk.

To get into robotics takes an incredible dedication to your craft, and a shedload of enthusiasm – but it can be done. Focusing on mathematics, physics, engineering, product design throughout your education, followed by specific study of robotics at, say, Carnegie Mellon, is an ideal route in – but it does take a lot of time and effort. This isn’t a Hollywood production – it requires years of studying and practical projects that aren’t quite as big or exciting as the robotics frontier, but the end rewards are incredible. So good luck, and who knows – we might even be featuring videos of your robot on the site, one day.

Volkswagen drive itself.

A different quadcopter.

NASA flying thrust machine.

Hemispherical Gimbaled Wheel Drive System using RC and Legos.

Small, yet smart and social robots.

Jumper.

Incredible flying robotic bird

Crawling router

Incredible hexapod plays bethoven using computer vision.

Flying robotic seagull.

We’re at the end of our bachelor degree (me and three classmates) and was recently interviewed by our local news paper; Firda.

http://www.hovedprosjekt.com/ (Norwegian) for more about this project.

This post explains how you can setup our own media centre using Lubuntu. Using my Fit-PC 2 as example.

Fit-PC is a small, light, fan-less nettop computer manufactured by the Israeli company CompuLab. I use it in my living room and it’s nearly invisible. When I install an SSD in it, I will stick it back on my TV.

After the installing Lubuntu from USB stick I had to manually shut the computer down. Apparently there are some ACPI bugs in Natty, but it’s not important. It will be on most of it’s life. I made sure the computer was up to date before installing display driver.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

The fit-pc 2 ships with GMA500 Intel graphics. It kinda sucks since Intel is unable to give us proper drivers for it! This is why I will think twice or even three times before buying anything from Intel again.

To use GMA500 I deceided to use EMGD (source):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gma500/emgd
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xorg-emgd emgd-dkms
sudo emgd-xorg-conf

emgd-xorg-conf creates a config in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-emgd.conf. This is when the problems occour. emgd-xorg-conf discovers wrong port which I had to manually edit. My modified 10-emgd.conf:
Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen 0 “Screen0″ 0 0
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “Intel_IEGD-0″
Driver “emgd”
VendorName “Intel(R) DEG”
BoardName “Embedded Graphics”
BusID “0:2:0″
Screen 0
Option “PcfVersion” “1792″
Option “ConfigId” “1″
Option “ALL/1/name” “svdo-display”
Option “ALL/1/General/PortOrder” “24000″
Option “ALL/1/General/DisplayConfig” “1″
Option “ALL/1/General/DisplayDetect” “1″
Option “ALL/1/General/Accel” “1″
Option “PortDrivers” “svdo”
Option “ALL/1/General/VideoRam” “131072″
Option “ALL/1/Port/2/General/name” “sdvo”
Option “ALL/1/Port/2/General/Edid” “1″
Option “ALL/1/Port/2/Attr/70″ “0″
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Screen0″
Device “Intel_IEGD-0″
Monitor “sdvo”
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1024×768″
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “sdvo”
ModelName “sdvo panel 1024×768″
EndSection

Section “DRI”
Mode 0666
EndSection

Section “Extensions”
Option “composite” “enable”
EndSection

Keyword here is ALL/1/Port/2 were port 2 was 4 in the orginal configuration and sdvo was lvds.

I then installed lirc to be able to use my transcend remote for my picture frame, you can use anything. I followed some tutorial for making it work. Basically run irrecord to trian lirc to understand my remote.

sudo irrecord -d /dev/lirc0 /etc/lirc/transcend.conf

I tried Boxee first, but it’s bloated. Ended up using XBMC:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Edit #1
If you want XBMC to automatically detect new movies just open crontab

crontab -e

and add the line

* 10 * * * wget -T 60 -q -O /dev/null "http://user:passwd@localhost:8080/xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=ExecBuiltIn(updatelibrary(video))" # run once a day

You will of course have to enable HTTP controlling in XBMC for this to work. Also make sure your user, password and port is correct from the line above.

End of edit

To make lirc work with XBMC we will have to setup a config in XBMC. It should be located in /home/user/.xbmc/userdata/Lircmap.xml. Here is mine:

<lircmap>
 <remote device="/etc/lirc/transcend.conf">
 <play>KEY_PLAYPAUSE</play>
 <pause>KEY_PLAYPAUSE</pause>
 <stop>KEY_STOP</stop>
 <forward>KEY_NEXT</forward>
 <reverse>KEY_PREV</reverse>
 <left>KEY_LEFT</left>
 <right>KEY_RIGHT</right>
 <up>KEY_UP</up>
 <down>KEY_DOWN</down>
 <select>KEY_OK</select>
 <pageplus>KEY_PAGEUP</pageplus>
 <pageminus>KEY_PAGEDOWN</pageminus>
 <back>KEY_EXIT</back>
 <menu>KEY_MODE</menu>
 <title>Guide</title>
 <info>KEY_CYCLEWINDOWS</info>
 <skipplus>Skip</skipplus>
 <skipminus>Replay</skipminus>
 <display>Aspect</display>
 <start>KEY_HOME</start>
 <record>Record</record>
 <volumeplus>KEY_VOLUMEUP</volumeplus>
 <volumeminus>KEY_VOLUMEDOWN</volumeminus>
 <mute>KEY_MUTE</mute>
 <power>KEY_POWER</power>
 <myvideo>KEY_VIDEO</myvideo>
 <mymusic>KEY_MUSIC</mymusic>
 <mypictures>KEY_PROG1</mypictures>
 <mytv>KEY_CALENDAR</mytv>
 <one>One</one>
 <two>Two</two>
 <three>Three</three>
 <four>Four</four>
 <five>Five</five>
 <six>Six</six>
 <seven>Seven</seven>
 <eight>Eight</eight>
 <nine>Nine</nine>
 <zero>Zero</zero>
 <star>Star</star>
 <hash>Hash</hash>
 <clear>Clear</clear>
 <enter>Enter</enter>
 <red>Red</red>
 <green>Green</green>
 <yellow>Yellow</yellow>
 <blue>Blue</blue>
 <teletext>Teletext</teletext>
 </remote>
</lircmap>

Give me a comment if anything is unclear.

After viewing some cool robots on YouTube, I deiced to build my own. It didn’t became to great due to poor equipment, but I managed to design, build and program it. It uses 18 Power HD servos (cheap), Arduino Mega, 2S LiPo 1900mAh and a regulator for it.

The sad part about my work done here is it’s poor design. Luckily I didn’t use too much time constructing it.

Very early this year, I started another(!) project. This is a webbased tool for everyone RC-interested which crashed and are in need of parts. Let’s be honest, we all crash and need parts. Which makes me believe this is a good project.

RC Part Finder.com is a click’n'buy service which let’s you find accurate and cheap(est) part for your vehicle. At this moment, anyone can register and add blueprints and start helping. I don’t earn any money on this, actually I loose some due to web hotel and data transfer. My goal nevertheless to make a useful tool for everyone at the cost of nothing.

To receive an additional 10 points I’m taking a “course” directly translated to: student company. This subject is as close to a real company as you get in Norway where the ultimate goal is to earn 140,000 NOK (~$25,000). Our company; MiAu-SB specializes in GSM communication. We are currently working on three projects for external customers. Will be giving details on this when they are finished.