Blossom

Blossom is an open-hardware, open-source tensile robot that you can handcraft and accessorize to your liking. You can read more about the project in the ACM T-HRI Paper and in Evan Ackerman's IEEE Spectrum article.

Here are two examples of Blossom robots:

For any questions (assembly or software related), please check/make public issues.

How to Cite

If you use this repository or any of its content, please cite it as follows:

Michael Suguitan and Guy Hoffman. 2019. Blossom: A Handcrafted Open-Source Robot. J. Hum.-Robot Interact. 8, 1, Article 2 (March 2019), 27 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3310356

Bibtex:

@article{suguitan2019blossom,
author = {Suguitan, Michael and Hoffman, Guy},
title = {Blossom: A Handcrafted Open-Source Robot},
year = {2019},
issue_date = {March 2019},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
volume = {8},
number = {1},
doi = {10.1145/3310356},
journal = {J. Hum.-Robot Interact.},
month = {mar},
articleno = {2},
numpages = {27},
keywords = {craft, social robotics, toolkit, handcrafted, robot toolkit, craft robotics, 
            research platform, open-source, Robot design, soft robotics}
}

Blossom How-To

Get repo

In a terminal, clone this repo

git clone https://github.com/hrc2/blossom-public/

Setup Software Dependencies

Make sure you're using [Python 3] To check, run python -V or python3 -Vin the terminal to check the version. As of now, this codebase was tested and works on Python 3.5.2 on Ubuntu 16.04 and Mac. The following steps will assume python -V reports with version >3.x.x. If it reports 2.x.x then replace python in the following steps with python3

Also ensure that pip3 is installed. To install:\ Ubuntu: sudo apt install python3-pip\ Mac: curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py, then python3 get-pip.py

Virtual environments (venv) should be installed, but if not:\ Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install python3-venv\ Mac: brew install python3-venv

Make a venv (virtual environment) in the top blossom directory and activate it:

python -m venv blossom_venv
source blossom_venv/bin/activate

General Setup

Ubuntu: You may need to run

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev libffi-dev python3-dev`

and

pip install wheel

To install dependencies, run in the main blossom directory:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Mac OSX: You may need to append --user to the pip command to circumvent installation issues:

pip install -r requirements.txt --user

If this still doesn't work, you may have to append sudo before pip:

sudo pip install -r requirements.txt --user

This may require you to run in sudo for subsequent steps.

It may take a while to install the dependencies; you may want to run pip verbose to make sure that it's still downloading: pip install -rv requirements.txt

If you run into an error opening a port, try changing Blossom's permissions: sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyACM0. Alternatively, rerun everything with admin privileges.

If you're using OSX and getting strange errors, try:

sudo chown -R $USER /Library/Python/3.5

Installation will take longer on a Raspberry Pi, and you may need additional dependencies:

sudo apt-get install xvfb

Building Blossom

To build your own Blossom, check out the Build Guide. The rest of this document will teach you how to set up the software to run the robot.

Note You need to have the basic software set up as listed above to build Blossom_

Running Blossom

CLI

To start the CLI, plug Blossom in and run

python start.py

_Error: could not open port. You may need to run sudo chmod 777 <the name of the port>. Ex: sudo chmod 777 /dev/ttyACM0

Additional flags:

-b do not start up Web UI
-p denote the port
-i specify an IP address (won't work with localhost)

Linux may default to a loopback IP (127.0.1.1); in this case you must specify the IP address using -i.

For example, to make Blossom nod with the yes sequence, type:

s -> Enter -> yes

Available commands:

l: list available sequences
s: perform a sequence, followed by the Enter key and the sequence name
To perform an idler (looped gesture), enter two sequence names separated by =, e.g. s -> Enter -> yes=no (play yes then loop no indefinitely until another sequence is played).
q: quit

Interfaces

The startup prompt will say

+-------------------+
|     IP ADDRESS    |
+-------------------+
| 10.132.3.171:8000 |
+-------------------+

The IP address in this case is 10.132.3.171. Your IP address will be different from 10.132.3.171

GUI

The GUI should be accessible via localhost:8000 or *IP address:8000 after starting up the CLI if -b was not specified. Otherwise, the CLI should print a message stating the server url.

Mobile app

Installation

Detailed instructions are available in BlossomApp

Controlling the robot

This allows you to control the robot's orientation (pitch, yaw, roll) by moving the phone and use sliders for the height.

Enter the IP address into the Host field and toggle Control robot. By default, the robot will copy the phone's orientation identically, i.e. the robot should be facing away from you. To control the robot as it's facing you, toggle Mirror to be On and the robot will gaze at the top end of the phone (like a cat looking at a laser pointer, emitting from the top of the phone).

Build reactions to videos

Open a new terminal and the video editor by typing: xdg-open blossom_blockly/index.html (Ubuntu) or open blossom_blockly/index.html (Mac), then hit “Enter.” The video editor should open in a new browser or tab.

Type in the IP address into the editor and press Update IP Address.

To update the video, paste the URL into the field and click Update Video.
Some videos have restrictions and cannot play.

Choreograph
In the left side of the video editor screen, use a Gesture block and input the starting time and gesture name.

Blocks must be connected to the initial block together for them to trigger gestures.
You can create new gestures with the mobile app and use them in the editor video with Reload Gestures.

Check Loop box to repeat the movement indefinitely until the next gesture.

Adjust the playback speed, exaggeration (amplitude) and posture (lean forwards/backwards):

-Choose and Adjustment block and add it to the gesture blocks in the "Adjustments" part  
-Enter the multiplier in the “multiply by” block.  
-Connect the multiplier block to the Adjustment block  
-Only one adjustment can be used at a time.

hrc2 / blossom-public

readme