A Start

2011-01-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

OK, whats the point of having a blog if I don't post on it? Here's a start. I'm am currently working on two projects right now - an adaptive hexapod named Crusty, and an autonomous Quadcopter drone (no cool name yet). I have ventured on dozens of smaller projects and hopefully I will post a few on here.

Introductions:

Crusty

Crusty is a research project I have been running for the last two years at Utah Valley University. It's seems that some of our research is original (that no one has done anything like it) so I wont delve too deep on him quite yet. He is based on a Lynxmotion Extreme Hex 3. Too describe our overall goal I will post an abstract to the paper yet to be published:

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a multi-sensor system designed to measure "Muscle Fatigue" in servo usage to solve the adaptive walking task. The adaptive walking task is an algorithm designed to optimize a walking sequence in real-time that requires uneven terrain with obstacles and discontinuities. Topics discussed include advantages and disadvantages of using various sensing methods in robotics, as well as a new hardware solution required to solve the adaptive walking task.

After we publish I hope to post everything about him (build logs, source code, schematics, diagrams, test results, ect.) Currently this project involves 3 individuals:

Dr. Curtis Welborn - Computer Science Professor and expert on robotics. Core ideas that we are proving originate from him.
Me (Nathan Harward) - Fall 2009 to present. I designed and developed the hardware and software that proves our concept. This involved circuit design, digital design and embedded software design. I'm am soon graduating so I brought on a new researcher (below).
David - David has recently taken over the rest of Crusty's software development to implement advanced adaptive algorithms. He will extend my paper and get us published (probably NCUR).

Here are some pictures:

In my next post I'll write about my quadcopter.

This Blog

2010-11-20T15:46:00.000-08:00

This is my first shot at a personal blog. I'm always working on projects and I need to better document my work, so here we go. Here's a quick intro: I'm Nate, and I'm a hardware hacker. I am from the Utah Valley area. I have been cracking open my electronics my entire life. I love developing embedded systems and have experience with Freescale, Microchip, TI microcontrollers as well as arduinos. I also have experience with designing hardware. I'm attracted to the idea of open source hardware and hope to make good contribution. I'm a engineer with a B.S. in Computer Engineering.

Nathan Harward

A Start

This Blog