metr0x

First roadside drive for MOSS, the 3D printed open source litter picking robot.

Tarmac, slopes, dry grass, fresh grass, the tracks go through all of it like a small bulldozer, nothing jams. Driven from the pad, straight from the battery switch, no laptop in the loop.

Numbers from the onboard log: over 8 min of driving, over 70 m on each track by the encoders. Pack at 11.68 V at the start, 11.34 V at the stop, roughly 9% of the pack by the resting voltage afterwards. And only about half of the pack is usable before the tracks start stalling in pivots.

The motors and the hardware in general held very well. Zero stall guard trips, zero dead pivots. The battery is the weak part, a $20 3S4P pack, 12 cells, sold as 40 Ah and clearly not. Charger and pack get replaced next. Rough estimate with proper high capacity cells: about 50 min and 430 m per charge.

This is what $3 of OpenRouter credits buys: a Claudia cameo with MOSS, the litter-picking robot 😅 Might try a bigger budget next time.

A small test to mark the release of MuJoCo 4, which adds plastic deformation among other features. Naturally, I wanted to try squashing plastic bottles with MOSS 😂

It’s also my first proper test using the simulation Dirac Robotics made for MOSS. There’s still tuning to do, and it needs calibrating against the real robot, but getting from “squeeze this” to “pick it up and put it in the bin” is a fun start.
@DiracRobotics

The first MOSS built in Europe is rolling!

I know how special it feels to see it move for the first time after all the printing, assembling and figuring things out. Seeing another maker have that moment with MOSS means a lot to me.

Yesterday we were talking about wheel hubs and motor torque. Today, his MOSS litter picking robot is moving. This has made my weekend.

Congrats @dropoutsanta

😂