Saturday, June 26, 2010

The Spybot- SRV-1 Blackfin

I've been getting asked a lot of questions regarding the SRV-1 Blackfin that we showcased on CNN so I thought I would post a little info on it.

I was putting together a spy segment and was searching around for the a bot that was made for home monitoring. I recalled the Rovio but to my surprise they had stopped manufacturing them (though there are a few still trickling around on the web). I came across Surveyor Corps and that's where I discovered this gem.

The SRV-1 is primarily used for research and education utilizing powerful components and a Blackfin processor.

The SRV-1 runs on your network as a virtually controlled webcam and a "self-navigating autonomous robot". You control it using any web browser. It has a camera on its face and you can tap into the feed like a helmet cam. The bot moves incredibly fast sometimes hard to control. I would ideally have liked in my experience to take down the speed which can be easily manipulated.

For funs I also enjoyed the dual laser pointers that lay on both sides of the camera.

Must note that this unit is being used in tests for Google's Lunar Landing Contest. (Which rewards the first one to reach the moon's terrain with a prize of 30million)

Non-tech savvy individuals need not apply. However, if you have the slightest interest in engineering the operation of this bot will blow your mind. For $525 hard to say if the practicality at this point is beyond the early adopter stage but I think we are moving in the right direction towards ...well...something...

See links: http://www.surveyor.com/blackfin/
http://osbots.com/shop/product/Surveyor/

2 comments:

  1. Pretty nifty little robot. You mention that the drive is difficult to control? The blackfin / ARM combo seems pretty powerful...analog devices does a great job with the video encoding... I believe its what quite a few professional realtime HD editor interfaces use.

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  2. have any idea on what radios theyre using in the lunar hardware tests?

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