My Walking Robotic History | James Bruton

[@s0n0fsparda]

I just realized you and the "crazy brit' " who made androids with poundland screwdrivers and maleable plastic are the same person. I have been following you since the blog, I'm mindblown. And glad I found back the crazy guy.

[@matthewmillaisgray]

Fantastic presentation James. Your enthusiasm remains positively contagious- My first robot build was the one found outlined in the Usborne electronic workshop book. It was a very basic balsa wood arm with the relay circuit with a LDR (to follow a drawn line), sensors etc. connected to a ZX Spectrum. This was in Zimbabwe, Africa- Not sure if you ever came along those books in the 80's. It was simple enough & happily designed to fuel the imagination of young minds. Thank you for your sharing. Greetings from the Cape of Good Hope peninsula

[@stumpy1495]

You should alternate between "best money can buy" builds with odrives etc and builds where you set yourself an "enthusiasts budget" of a couple of hundred. It would be great to see how you approach the problems/balance of cashflow vs quality and capabilities.

[@sabre0smile]

Well frankly this is encouraging... I mean it's not like you learned overnight but your first attempts look like my current attempts. Plus you're kind enough to share your experiences! Thanks for another fascinating video!

[@spikekent]

Fascinating insight James. Thank you.

[@bosqueblanco3744]

just started researching bipeds, so glad i found this video !

[@leestephens1137]

Awesome to see your experience and skills in summary. Thank you for all your efforts to share this with us.

[@empirerecords7137]

Android 1 is terrifying! Haha. 1, 2 android 1 is coming for you!

[@bruceneely4859]

Good to see a review of your robotics history, I've seen most of your older youtubes, but good to see it all strung together with the background.

[@jamesbruton]

thanks!

[@kyocode]

how did u make this 5 days ago it just came out

[@bruceneely4859]

@@kyocode It was actually posted for Paterons a few days early, I recommend it if you want to get the episode early,

[@kyocode]

@@bruceneely4859 ooooh makes sense

[@Cynical...]

Love that despite every iteration presenting more problems, here you are over 10 years later still sitting in your attic coding and bolting stuff together... You're honestly one of my favourite channels purely because I can rely on you to show me god damn robots, rather than the politics and attention-grabbing crap that this website rewards.

[@jamesbruton]

thanks!

[@jurpik35]

wow this guy is a doctor in walking robotics

[@mbunds]

Everything you have done is inspirational; I like very much that the shortcomings of your earlier machines did not discourage you to keep improving them. imagine what you could do with Boston Dynamics’ budget! Thanks for another excellent presentation!

[@tafaragadze6432]

This man is a bonafide genius. All this innovation on barely a shoestring budget. Man has done more for robotics with wood and screwdriver motors than most people have with million dollar budgets. Someone give this man a million dollars and watch him make the robots from Avatar and an army of terminator T800s.

[@lennonthomas1223]

ive got so many ideas in my head yet no knowledge or equipment to make my ideas a reality, ide love to just hand my ideas off to other people who are capable of actually producing something just to see if my ideas would even work, walking robots ofc are what i think about most, this guy has always been geat inspiration for my ideas

[@IfYouWillem]

He seems like fun for now, but eventually when his robotic underlings place him on the throne and the rest of us under foot, we won't be laughing...

[@reggiep75]

The machines are coming and we'll regret laughing at their crippled limping. Stop them from becoming self-aware and burn all windscreen wiper motors and other essential kinetic material they need to move!

[@loganjorgensen]

I really appreciate all your enthusiasm in how you tried everything over all that time. It really was harder only 10 years ago and further for DIY robotics, I'd dreamed and planned a lot over the years but I never even built one robot let alone that many, kudos. :D

[@Skyentific]

Great projects! Super impressive.

[@prashantandsapna]

Your journey brings back so many memories. except you took your projects a lot forward. when i was in high school (~1997), i made a radio controlled cybernetic hand using umbrella skeletons, a metal sheeting from my geometry set enclosures, servos and controllers from toy cars. no youtube... no cheap china parts... infact i dont think i even had a computer back then. and being in Dubai there was little to no help on robotics or electronics... how times change :)

[@themoss]

Well done James.... your determination and consistency are just too impressive. I certainly learned something watching this video... big thank you.

[@IndianRobotics]

Hi james big fan from India . Really you are so good in Robotics. I am going to make humanoid based on your tutorials.

[@jamesbruton]

thanks!

[@gadgetmerc]

Android 10 sucked me into your channel. I really liked the various iron man projects and cosplay but the robots keep me a very happy Patron.

[@gc1370]

You are one of the most amazing people I have ever heard of. I have never been so inspired and encouraged to learn

[@halzion]

“And I guess I originally started building these robots to be better at writing software, I’m still not that good” But you are probably one of the first few _People_ on earth to build a walking 2 legged robot in real life!

[@Sharklops]

So glad to see this recap! Those early ones were wild!

[@russkiyraketa2621]

I'm so proud of you James. I remember watching ur arc reactor video u printed in your ao-101 and thinking damn this guy's is awesome. Here we are today!

[@CyrixLord]

this video is an inspiration for when I get bogged down and unmotivated in my own projects. thanks for posting

[@hunterbernard725]

I have been watching your channel for a very long time. I like all of your videos. You have inspired me to make robots of my own. I love your exoskeleton project.

[@literallykey3298]

I know this video is two years old, but it's wild seeing how different things were. Doesn't seem that long ago, but it's quite a contrast to now being able to make pretty much whatever fairly easily with cheap 3D printers and super powerful microcontrollers for $4. The only thing I wish we still had is radio shack (I'm just a freshman mechanical engineering student and it died before I learned its glory).

[@karimjaw20]

thanks for sharing this, it very inspiring! and showing your earlier walking robots left me with no excuses not build one today, because if you managed to make a walking robot back then I surly should be able to build one with the technology available today. very insightful thanks!!

[@chrisfuller1268]

Amazing story! Your passion and energy is evident!

[@sethrd999]

Great trip down memory lane James, We all came from humbler origins / all started from somewhere, the fact that your drive to just make it better brought you this far speaks volumes. This is great mantra for anyone in really any area of life that perseverance is everything. Also the term 'Good' is relative, your results speak for themselves, keep up the great work!.

[@jamesbruton]

thanks, I'm really glad I documented it, to some extent anyway

[@amandahugankiss4110]

I really liked the fella with the spine. My thoughts have been on tension only mechatronics lately. Nature don't push..

[@Octopossible]

Every one of these is amazing. You should be awarded a PhD in robotics.

[@Orbis92]

Those homemade PCBs and hand wired boards remind me at those times I was still scared by electronic project. I was sure, I would never learn and understand a programming language nor did I understand those mighty op amps ;) Amazing to see how "simple" (from todays perspective) you started and where you got today with your quite complicated openDog. Thanks again for making it open and walking us through the programming. I learned so much from the last videos :)

[@thecrazy8888]

Man... the things we could have done if our paths had crossed in high school. I need a fellow geek in my life.

[@JoeyWinkler-fw9hp]

absolutely nothing could have prepared me for that first pic of V1 lmaooo that is the stuff of nightmares

[@stevenacton359]

just seen you on the syfy channel in a Vector advert - you've hit the bit time now nice one!!

[@bobbymcgee723]

This story read like a highly narrated version of every "this is where the robot that killed the human race came from" montage. I predict that in 10 years, James is going to design and build the one we all need to be afraid of. Kidding aside, James.... really great work man. Schools across the world should use you as a real life example of "follow your dreams".

[@Vaxtin]

It's 3:02 AM. I'm already way past fatigued. Now this shows up in my feed. 24 minutes. Okay, I guess I'm going down fighting on this one.

[@evantaitt2031]

Deadly work James. Hats off to you..

[@BenRyherd]

It is amazing and truly inspiring how prolific of a builder you have been! I can't even imagine having to build in a full size desktop computer into one of the robots. Also, I can't imagine having to tweak orientation and sensitivity on a dozen RC Heli Gyros. I got into Multi-rotor building when the control boards were still the guts out of 3 Heli Gyros mounted to a single PCB (Soldered at angles on standoffs of course. I find your design/experimentation methodology very similar to my own which is very cool. Keep up the good work James!

[@dekutree64]

lol, I was looking into pneumatic muscles for my project, and came to the same conclusion that solenoid valves are too expensive to use. But I have since learned of an interesting way to do similar linear pull actuation using electric motors, called a twisted string actuator. Basically you use a motor to twist up a pair of strings which causes them to pull toward the motor. Simple and lightweight. Look it up. Another awesome piece of equipment you should be aware of is the Bosch BNO055 absolute orientation sensor. It's like a regular IMU but with some brilliant programming to sort out your orientation from the motion data. It gives you a quaternion that represents your orientation with respect to the earth (north/south, east/west, up/down). Probably would be great for balancing robots. I'm using them for motion capture control gloves, where I have one sensor on the forearm and one on the back of the hand. Inverse transform the hand orientation by the forearm orientation and then convert to euler angles. Then convert those angles to servo signals, and you can have one servo follow your wrist bend motion, and one follow wrist twist.

[@antonnym214]

The dog looks great, man! Please make it robust enough to ride on, because what could be better than strolling around the neighborhood? Great vid!

[@mejoresvideos2147]

ERES EL MEJOR, SIGUE HACIENDO MAS VIDEOS, APRENDO MUCHO DE TI

[@Electrodoc1968]

Hi James. Reminds me of my experimentation. Did find a Gem off a DLL Called INPOUT32.DLL It allowed un-hindered reading of any Clocks, Inputs, Outputs and, of course Joystick ports. All interfacing with VB6.0 I'd find addresses in the bios or control panel, convert that to decimal then, using VB It was a simple instruction of OUT 888,1 To send pin 1 of the LPT (Printer Port) High. I used it to control a 36 segment Cash register display driver chip. Pin one would be programmed as a shift register pulse (Clock) and pin 2 as a toggle for the on/off value of that LED (Data) and pin 3 pulsed to advance to the next line by simply switching the negative rail for the next row of 32 LEDS using an extended decade counter. I Got 512 LEDS, So 8, 8 x 8 grid LED modules in a similar fashion as your VERO Board Comparators. BEAR In mind, this wasn't the textbook way of doing it.. It was Astounding what I realised and understood from the entire experience of the self taught process. I even had to put a For next loop in to do nothing 3 times between the high level on pin 1 and the level on pin 2. AND That was mentioned on the datasheet of the chip.. The entire "Screen" manage 11fps. average. Not slow when you realise its pointing to ONE LED at a time basically with a programmed hi / lo clock pin. The penny dropped for me regarding computer memory and I2C Concepts. I Was a failure at school. wasn't allowed to study computers cos i was (Rubbish) at maths. LOL

[@nicholasloker4603]

Love what you do mate, been following you for a few years now, very inspiring stuff always makes me want to have a crack at doing something cool 👍

[@DamianReloaded]

Amazing! More interesting that Darpa!

[@kikller]

that is quite a journey!! thank you for sharing!

[@bluesquadron593]

Thank you James! Onto andorid 100!

[@gordonyoud5975]

James, you could have saved an awful lot of time if you had grabbed a kid from off the street and wired it into your 3d printed parts. No need for expensive motors and such. :-)) Seriously, you have had some fun and I think you have done a fantastic job. My robot is not finished yet but it is getting there, just needs time.

[@ElectraFlarefire]

Very well done keeping up this standard for so long.

[@IntrospectAvionics]

that first one was Truly disturbing lol imagine running into that phantom of the opera Esq Android in a dark alley

[@quoit99training83]

If I want to build robots like you have in this awesome channel - can you recommend your learning path, the courses you took (or suggest), programming that we should know ... etc. thanks!

[@TurboLife]

Well that was fun! Really cool to see your progression!

[@ozoid]

You provide some excellent Inspiration :-)

[@jamesbruton]

thanks!

[@Poisonjam7]

17:25 Nice Parker! You have good taste in guitars. I have a Parker too, and it’s probably my #1 or second favorite. Mine’s a different model than yours, and it’s blue. 😎🤘

[@reggiep75]

17:45 - Novation BassStation rack.. nice modern YET retro synth gear! ;-)

[@steveparkes]

'James' dodgy webcam' made a few quid in the days before Patreon and T-shirts ;)

[@Rikirock656]

Omg android one is so creepy! Lol

[@Xbearnt_YT]

this shows that ur a electrycity genious BIG MAN

[@lasdi]

*Très instructif*

[@mynameismynameis666]

that is some great stuff and very inspiring.

[@supermariobraincancer6417]

It would be really cool. if he was able to make a themed walking robot, like a animatronic that could walk around

[@jamesbruton]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/b6eygXusnqyErck

[@TheWinstn60]

Man you’ve earned your stripes very informative thank you

[@trulyinfamous]

That first Android looks super creepy and I love it.

[@Knightfire66]

as soon as i learn how to program microcontroller and motors and integrate them into circuits i will try to build my own robo... i understand that 3d printer are very helpful. luckily i have acces to one in the university

[@000Krim]

҉K҉N҉I҉G҉H҉T҉F҉I҉R҉E҉6҉6҉ Did you learn?

[@searbhreathach9762]

You have to start somewhere!

[@SuiseisekiSoffice]

You did a very good job James, I love to watch your videos and get inspired by your robots! Why don't you put an A.I. in your droids? That should be awesome!

[@-RobGPT-]

working on a small bipedal companion, trying to imitate human legs as much as possible, the bot will weight under 1kg using acrylic for the skeleton. with 11kg servos, hopefully this setup will make my little bot a real runner

[@jasonstokes5469]

Can you take on the challenge of the Inmoov legs for the bot?

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

@jamesbruton >>> 👍👍

[@vince_martyn]

Like number 1000 - great stuff James!

[@kayakMike1000]

Yeah... It's cool that you just DO SOMETHING... I would do a bit more planning. For example, you could do some calculations on how much torque the hip, knee, and ankle joint need to be to do something really basic, like balance one one foot. Bipedal walking is quite a challenge, it's like the robot is constantly falling, but catches its self on alternate legs. Shuffling is better than nothing, but legs need to have a purpose, like can it navigate stairs?

[@Femo-ok]

In 10 or 20 years from now you will be like a real version of Dr. Light.

[@kyootfox]

James, don't give up on Arduino yet, have you considered bus transmission, SPI? With the master being the 'Coordinator/External Communications' node and the other two taking on the kinematics of fore/aft motion, they all could be communicating on the buss and making nano decisions of motion as requested from the master Coordinator.

[@ryanau7222]

a lot of your robots dont have arms, which would help greatly w/ the counter balance as it walks. looking forward to building my own robot one day. your videos are very inspiring.

[@saddlepiggy]

Wow this is a great walkthrough

[@marcellocalabresi6018]

Thanks for this video. :-)

[@samuellarouche1491]

Yo the metal robot you did with colin f dosent walk ? You can do it!?

[@BruceKenobi]

Hi James!!! long time follower of your excellent channel, after seeing your great job with the walking robots, I started thinking: could it be possible to make the WA-7 Waitress droid from Dexter's Dinner in Star Wars Episode 2 life-size? could you picture it?

[@G0thCrayon]

Where on Earth did you source that much thermoplastic for Android X? It's 2021, and I still can't find a company that sells it in lots over 1.5lbs, and even then it's at prices bordering on the ridiculous...

[@1894db]

Every time a android number was mentioned my mind immediately went to DBZ

[@clonkex]

In my case it was DBZa but I agree ;)

[@1894db]

@@clonkex Same for me actually, I just didn't think it had as much name recognition :)

[@nepatop]

Dragon Ball Z

[@grantclarke4713]

Very interesting video....thanks

[@Dust599]

Robotic santa?? its that time of year :)

[@NabilTouchie]

22:36 "I'm still not that good (in writing software)" you GOT to be kidding...

[@jamesbruton]

well....

[@saliman4874]

evolution of Brutons Dynamics

[@michaelblackstock6140]

Nice historical reflection :-) Have you considered more ball/joint connections rather that two dimensional actuators? The ball/joints would give more fluid movements, granted easier said than done.

[@autocon2002]

Just wait until he decides it's time to murder Son Goku and builds Android 16.

[@cheesepuddin1266]

Where did you learn your basics, because even the first robots you had relays, ect. So where did you learn to do that, school?

[@danylaley]

I wonder how is it that you are not designing for Boston Dynamics or leading any other research team in top universities.

[@capatainnemo]

i saw you on a tv advert on Blaze tv

[@john2759]

Awesome 😎🎸

[@ShinobiEngineer]

GENIUS! 👏🤓

[@linx316]

The robot on 2:45 was creepy with the head on. 😲😲

[@theredstormer8078]

Gotta do an 8 leg one later.

[@justpeepz3952]

This guys gonna make an army some day

[@bbogdanmircea]

Omg amazing ... Now please say which is your favorite one, mine is Android 7 with only 3 wiper motors it is pretty cool !

[@ZombieB]

That's pretty good. 🤖

[@ignaciomendiburue]

please do chappie!!

[@richardbloemenkamp8532]

Great overview! I seems that every tall walking robot becomes a bit unstable, wobbly, slow and heavy after a while. And then they can only take small steps. What would it take to make a robot that can take bigger step for example steps of two foot lengths? It's a facinating problem.

[@catto2496]

totally agree, I have the same problem... the only way I did it it was adding a 3rd leg 🤣