An air muscle is a simple pneumatic device developed in the 1950's by J.L. McKibben. Like biological muscles, air muscles contract when activated. Robotists find it interesting that air muscles provide a reasonable working copy of biological muscles. So much so that researchers can use a human skeleton with air muscles attached to the skeleton at primary biological muscle locations to study biomechanics and low level neural properties of biological muscles. The low cost, ease of use and simple contruction allows it to be quickly adapted in robotics by experimentors and hobbyists.

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Piezoelectric materials when squeezed generate electricity. The electricity generated is in the form of a momentary charge (or voltage) when the material is initially stressed. The voltage "squeezed out" of piezo-electric materials is in proportion to the mechanical deformation (stress) placed on the material and the intrinistic characteristics of the material. If the force producing the mechanical deformation on the material is reversed, the polarity of the output voltage will also reverse.

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In this series of articles we discuss programming Microchip's PIC Microcontrollers using the PIC Basic Compiler, as well as programming the chips with the EPIC Programmer.

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This is a two module project that can be built for about $129.90. The first module is a robotic arm kit. The second module is the IBM PC interface kit. Together these modules form a functional unit that permits you to experiment and program automation and animatronics into a fully "wired" control robotic arm. One also has the option to control the arm interactively using the either a manual controller or the WIN95/98 program.

This article details the construction and building of a stand alone programmable speech recognition circuit that may be interfaced to control just about anything electrical, such as; appliances, robots, test instruments, VCR's TV's, etc.. The circuit is trained (programed) to recognized words you want it to recognize.

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Nitinol is an alloy of nickel and titanium that belongs to a class of materials call shaped memory alloys (SMA). SMA's have interesting mechanical properties. Nitinol for example contracts when heated, which is the opposite of what standard metals do when heated (expand). Not only does the alloy contract, but also it produces a 100 times greater thermal movement (expansion, contraction) than standard metals.

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The 1490 sensor is a solid state hall effect device. It is sensitive enough to detect the Earth's weak magnetic field. When rotated it can display the position of the four cardinal points on a compass, North (N), South (S), East (E) and West (W). As well as the intermediate directions: North East (NE), North West (NW), South East (SE), and South West (SW).

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The 1525 Analog Compass requires regulated 5.00 volts DC input to output a DC ratiometric signal. The input should be "spike" and polarity protected if operated from a vehicular power supply. Power consumed is approximately 18 to 19 mils (0.018 to 0.019 amps) when using a 5.00 volt power supply.

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Servomotors are basiclly geared down dc motors with positional feedback control, allowing for accurate positioning of the rotor, with a range of 90 degrees. In this article we will control servo motors via a PIC Microcontroller.

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This article will explain the operating principals of stepper motors, and will give instructions on how to control them via a PIC16F84 microcontroller to perform many functions.

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The solar engine is an on board power plant for BEAM type robots, sometimes called living robots. The circuit is simple in function. The solar cell charges the capacitor, until a predetermined voltage is reached, where the trigger circuit dumps the stored electrical power from the main capacitor through the main load (a high efficiency motor). The cycle then repeats.

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