Twin Tweaks ...
nonetheless it was a vexing setback.
During our fine tuning of the
Robophilo we witnessed something
disturbing and tragic. We were editing
the range of motion on the right leg,
and then the Robophilo’s arm began
to quiver. We checked to see that
nothing was blocking it, but the
quivering only got worse. Then, the
entire robot started to convulse as its
LED started to dim. It was a tragic
thing, watching the Robophilo run out
of batteries before our eyes. The good
news is that the battery pack is
rechargeable, and the kit comes with
a charger. A few hours later, we were
ready to press on.
Philo Goes West
ROBOPHILO MANUAL.
done for the servomotors by hooking
them into the PCB (printed circuit
board). The kit does include a battery
pack, and the tuning is a nice way to
become familiar with the PCB before
the more daunting task of wiring up
the entire robot.
Final Touches and
Fine Tuning
Once the Robophilo is given all of
its limbs, there are only a few fine
touches before it is finished. One of
them is to
ROBOPHILO REMOTE. wire it up,
which is made
very straight-
forward by helpful diagrams in the
instruction manual. The mess of wires
can be cleaned up with some wire
sleeves included in the kit.
The penultimate step of building
the Robophilo is to do the fine tuning
for all of the servos, which is a
laborious and time-consuming process.
The major money-saving measure
employed in the design of the
Robophilo is in the servos, and the
tradeoff for achieving a low cost
becomes clear during the fine tuning
process. The Robophilo servos are
cheap analog servos that lack the
torque of the servos in the Robonova
and Bioloid, and are also more
difficult to tune. Thankfully, the tuning
process is more tedious than difficult
and the quality of your experience will
most likely depend on how perfect
you insist the tuning to be.
Tuning basically consists of
entering various positions for the
servos and then adjusting the offset
and range of motion in the
Robophilo’s fine tuning editor. With
20 servos to tune, this can turn into a
time-consuming affair. During the
tuning process is also when the
instructions recommend to connect
the pushbars for the left and right leg
movement and head turning into the
servos. The pushbar is easy to insert
into the large servo horn for the waist
movement, but the other servo horns
have holes that are simply too small
for the pushbars. After vigorously
pressing the pushbars into place, we
were able to attach everything, but
ROBOPHILO PCB.
After what seemed like hours of
fine tuning, we were finally ready to
finish the robot. The last steps include
cleaning up the wires and attaching
the final body panels. Unfortunately,
halfway through putting on the
Robophilo’s ill fitting shoes we ran out
of screws! Most robot kits like the
Robophilo come with ample numbers
of spare screws, and running out was
a disappointing surprise. We suppose
we could have seen it coming,
because several other sizes of screws
came in only the exact amount
necessary, with no extras left over.
Thankfully, we had enough screws to
keep the shoes on and the main body
panels on.
Unfortunately, the body casing for
the Robophilo was a big engineering
disappointment in that it seemed to
sorely underestimate the amount of
space needed for the wires to escape.
Also, the front panel doesn’t even
seem to consider that extra room is
required on one side for the small
servo that turns the head. The thin
plastic is easy to modify, but it is a bit
annoying that it has to come to that.
Putting the final pieces onto the robot
should be a triumphant experience,
not the most frustrating of the entire
build.
Despite the final frustrations, we
had finished the bot and there was no
denying that it scored high marks in
cool factor. As a final touch, the
60 SERVO 07.2008