Hello Everyone, Welcome to the Pistonrobot Website
DISCLAIMER: We note: Physically real versions of a design can potentially be dangerous. So, we advise strongly, do not create a physically real version of any of my designs if you cannot or will not include that you will always control them in a manner that is legal, and reasonable, and safe.
This website features designs about the Pistonrobot and also designs about other topics.
The concept of the Pistonrobot was to explore a robot design where the robot is structured to mimic a human being both in its physical proportions and in the ways in which it can move.
We think the motion of hydraulic cylinders (their proper name, but they are referred to by most people as pistons), is much more like the motion of human muscles as compared to the movements that are caused by rotary encoder type motion sources.
We placed hydraulic cylinders (pistons) in the Pistonrobot design as the primary motion creating structures because we wanted Pistonrobot to be a mimic of a human being in its motions and proportions.
Thus, to us, the name Pistonrobot seemed appropriate.
Here’s some fun stuff to watch, (we try to place on this home page our most recent work is first), then follows some robot stuff.
Enjoy! Dr. Gray 🙂
I designed a valve that allows a CPU to have digital control of a hydraulic cylinder. One use I had for this valve was in several areas of the heavy lift drone, for example as a method to control the tilt rotor function. I realized this valve could also very nicely control the hydraulic cylinders of the pistonrobot. I realized this valve would also make feasible a very nice robot hand that could be a close mimic of the human hand. Here below is a download link that I created that will allow you to download this video. It is an update in that I plan a series of YouTubes about this robot hand design that are more detailed and more completely describe how this hand will work. More to follow. Enjoy!
Here’s the YouTube link to that video:
I have been working on a Heavy Lift Drone design for awhile. I finally got to the point where I could make a series of YouTube videos about some of the aspects of this drone. I made a video about the Propellers that the Heavy Lift Drone will use and I made some videos about how the Heavy Lift Drone will manage energy and power so it can get itself flying along. I also have a page here on my website that I named Heavy Lift Drone, it has some more information on this topic. Enjoy! Dr. Gray
Linked above is the YouTube video that I sent to my YouTube channel. This video is 3 hours long. I made it a long video so that I could completely explain the Rigging Suggestion and how it would look. I thought it would be useful to include an example of why Rigging is important, so the first hour of the video describes the Pistonrobot’s ankle, why it was designed the way it was, and how a Rigging feature would help to visualize and optimize how this ankle would work.
The process of adding “Rigging” to these mechanical systems allows the parts of these systems to be moved around in a manner that is much less complicated than having to go into the 3D drawing program an individually move around the various parts of the various mechanical items that are in the mechanical system.
This use of the word “Rigging” has a specific meaning in the context of setting up movement parameters for groups and structures that are depicted in a 3D drawing program file. In this context, “Rigging” has no connection to sailing, or adding inappropriate selection processes to what are supposed to be random events.
I created a suggestion for Sketchup outlining how a “Rigging” option could be added to Sketchup. I created a YouTube video where I discuss my suggestion.
I realized that I had a discussion topic about a set of items that are designed to make it much easier and less expensive to create a Pistonrobot. I named these items the Simple Linear Actuator and the Sophisticated Linear Actuator. I discuss them both in more detail in YouTube videos that I created. I also gave them there own page here at the Pistonrobot website.
44mb mp4 video Thumbnail Sets-01-14-v1-using-camtasia
I made an mp4 video showing internal and external rotation of the left arm. I made this video using stop motion techniques to create the video from still image renders from KeyShot v7.
The video below is an engine design that I created that uses fossil fuel to provide power to the Pistonrobot. This engine is designed to run and make essentially no noise. I think an engine that makes no noise is pretty cool, and is essential for any practical robot. I think there could be other uses for this engine, for example to supply power to drones, or to supply power to generators for applications where very quiet electric power generation is desired.
We write about Pistonrobot and our other designs too using WordPress at this website.
We design 3D models of our designs using the program named Sketchup Pro.
We render our 3D models using the program named KeyShot.
We make mp4 movies about our design work using the program named Camtasia.
We also have a YouTube channel, the name of that channel is Patrick Gray.
This website has download links for many of the files that we used to make the content here. If you want to download the file, just click on the download link. We remind you that Sketchup Pro and KeyShot file types can only be opened by the programs that run them. So if you want to download and open these files, you will need a functioning copy of those programs running on your computer.
There’s a lot of content on this website just depending in any year what was the design concept that we were working on that year. Of course, we encourage you to navigate around inside the website and see what is there.
We’ll plan at present to put on this home page our most recent design work and we will keep on the Home Page a few of our favorite robot movies.
We try to have a separate subject area at the website for each of the topics that we are designing about. Sometimes it can take us a little while to get those sub-topic pages up and running properly. Sigh.. Welcome to all.
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