Site icon Meccanismo Complesso

InMoov – the open source 3D printed robot

Fabio Nelli
Meccanismo Complesso - InMoov
Meccanismo Complesso - InMoov

The InMoov project

InMoov is the first open source robot achievable with 3D printers.

InMoov is a Gael Langevin’s project, a French sculptor and designer. His main idea was to be able to carry out a project, such as a robot, through cooperation and sharing of all those who are able to contribute in this area, working through a community of “builders”.

Thus, currently, the form of this project is nothing but the product of a considerable number of people, each of whom has contributed in his field of expertise, contributing to the InMoov project. In the official  InMoov website, there is an interactive map (see Figure 2) where you can see the location of all the builders who have contributed or who are currently participating in the project.

Fig.2: builders in the world

By clicking on each marker you can get the information about each builder along with a short description of his contribution to the project (see Fig.3).

Fig.3: one of many InMoov builders around the world.

Build your InMoov

Furthermore, in the official website you can also find any instructions on how to make InMoov in all its parts. In fact, to achieve this beautiful robot, nor great skills nor special tools are necessary. The only component really necessary in this kind of project is the passion.

The InMoov robot is designed to be developed component by component. That is, it is possible to develop each of its parts separately, such as a hand, the head, a shoulder, etc. So it is not necessary to build the entire project, but you can engage in any of these components at your choice, focusing on it in a particular way and gradually making improvements, and then eventually publishing them on the site so contributing to the improvement of the project in general. This is a bit the spirit of the project.

Fig.4: The InMoov arm

To begin to implement the various components of the InMoov project you will need to have, first, the following components:

As far as the 3D printing, the site provides all the STL files required to print each component (as shown in Fig.5).

Fig.5: An example of a component set with the corresponding STL files

Each of these printable components is well illustrated in the site, and you can download your STL files in a simple and direct way, selecting the desired component.

The material generally used for the printing of these components is PLA (polylactic acid) and ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene), which are both thermoplastic polymers commonly used for all extrusors 3D printers, the cost of which is easily accessible.

Once printed, these components may be assembled together by screws or glued directly (with acetone for ABS, and with epoxy2 for PLA). However, the assembly of each part of the InMoov robot is illustrated and explained in detail within the official website.

The Nervo Board

The components building of the InMoov project is not limited to the printing of its mechanical components, but also to the realization of a series of electronic cards intended for the control of various servo motors (servo boards) implementing the movements of the joints of the humanoid robot.

In this regard, Marten de Groot and Leon van der Horst have made a set of boards called Nervo Boards. These boards are designed specifically to handle communication between microcontrollers such as Arduino Uno or Arduino Mega with various servo boards and sensors present in almost every part of the robot.

Fig.6: The Nervo Boards kit

The Nervo Boards kit consists precisely of 11 mini breakout boards with different sizes and of 1 shield board. If you want to make the whole InMoov robot then you will need two boards kit. In addition to these kits you need to buy a corresponding set of components to be soldered on them, and some of them are printable in 3D (or if you prefer, you can buy them directly on the site).

Figure 7 shows the shield boards after you have soldered all the components and then connected to the power supply.

Fig. 7: The shield board in the Nervo Boards kit

The MyRobotLab software

Regarding the software, the MyRobotLab is the application at the basis of the entire InMoov project. MyRobotLab is an open source framework programmed in Java and designed to be used both in robotics and for other types of automated systems.

This software provides a number of tools that allow you to add at your robotics projects some advanced features:

Getting started with MyRobotLab (MRL)

Download the latest release from the official site MyRobotLab. It is a JAR file named myrobotlab.jar.

The create a directory naming it mrl and then put the just downloaded JAR file in it. Start a session by terminal ( cmd on Windows) and finally input the following command:

java -jar myrobotlab.jar

This command will start the downloading and installation of all the components constituting the MyRobotLab software, needed to run the application.

Once the application has been installed on your PC, the MyRobotLab application will start showing the following window. If you select the runtime tab in the menu. you can see all modules which contribute to the control of the various robot components, including many tools and services that increase the InMoov features. From here you can see the status of all modules: gray ones are not installed modules, green are the installed modules. At the right in the white area you can see the list of the modules which are currently active (services). If you want to install all of them, you can select  System-> Install All  from the menu (see Figure below), otherwise if you wish to install only one module you have to select the desired module by clicking on it, and then with the Context Menu (right mouse button) select Install.

Once all the services you need are activated, you can “program” them graphically by designing a scheme in which you can assign the output data of a service to another service as input.

[:]

Exit mobile version