It's Alive!

Hello_World by Ryan Luke Johns
Hello_World, a photo by Ryan Luke Johns on Flickr.
After an incredible amount of pulled-hair and late-night troubleshooting, we finally have movement. "Abe" took his first awkward steps in his new home on November 29, 2011 at 5:24 pm. It wasn't soon after that a test-run code was generated and the above image was produced. The robot's path was programmed in its native RAPID language with the assistance of Rhino 3D and Python. The image is simply a long exposure+flash (no Photoshop!) of the robot moving along this path with an LED taped to it.

To summarize what it took to get where we are, here's a little slideshow (click the pop-out button to view it in a new window):



This is the end of the beginning. Let the work begin!