Ethel Is a Mean Lil Lady
April 23rd, 2009 by SBSo, for a little background: Stephen Nelson is one of our favorite people that most of the six of you who check this site regularly have never heard of. He builds things like power tool racers and, more importantly, robots.
His stable include Evelyn, a Modified Dawg (watch out, 16mg video download); Eva, the beer retriever, and his latest and gnarliest creation, Ethel, (named for the Zappa song). As Mr. Nelson says, “The goal of building Ethel is a learning experience with software and vision system on a off road robot.” At least this was the goal when he started, she has since sprouted a flamethrower and a portable DJ rig, amongst other things. But I digress.
I will now turn over the tale of the latest adventures with Ethel to Mr. Nelson himself posting from his garage while nursing his road rash:
Ya know, all I wanted to do is build a little toy using my new welder and shop tools plus a lot of the robotic combat parts that have been sitting around for years now. So I started on Ethel and she was going to be 2WD and friendly. Then for some unknown reason I changed my mind and she got Bigger now she is 4WD with 100 lbs of lead batteries. The robot weighs at least 250 lbs. right now.
Now, I had already tested her drive train with a RC radio and even her PC based computer controls as well. Anyways today I got her running after a lot of wiring and control circuits and other features were added I also just refined her software (again) this afternoon. I tested her on my welding table (on Blocks) and got her working pretty smoothly. So I let her down to the ground and drove out in to the driveway and boy she was working great although the joystick is VERY sensitive and the robot can do wheelies and hit full speed (4.9 MPH) almost instantly. I did quite a bit of driving and was really starting to get used to the Joystick dead band.
While standing behind Ethel I noticed that one of the buttons on my wireless joystick was triggering one of my control circuits that I hadn’t programmed it for. So I leaned towards Ethel and accidently barely touched reverse on the joystick. Immediately Ethel ran over me and knocked me down on the ground. MeeYOUCH! Ya know I weigh more than Ethel does and she took me down like I wasn’t even there. . .
Ya know it’s funny Ethel comes from all of the robots I have built before including her Dad, Electric Lunch. About 10 years ago that robot ran over me on the same leg in almost the same spot where it left a scar. Yep she’s just like her DAD, she is evil and not to be taken lightly I’ll be backing down her acceleration software a bit after my leg quits throbbing. Ah, ya gotta love the Trial and Terror phase of building. . .
This is Ethel. She ain’t pretty, but she gets the job done:
This funny little harmless anecdote brought to you by the people who swear robots are just lulling us into a false sense of security.
Ethel will be featured at RoboGames 2009 this year, if Stephen can get his darling little flame-spewing hunk of evil to behave herself in time for the event.
