5 ms·

I'm having a problem smoothing the stepper motors with real time motion data. I was hoping someone on HN could point me in the right direction.

tlb 11y ago
You either need microstepping or servo motors with encoder feedback. Microstepping drives like [0] are buttery smooth. [0] http://www.geckodrive.com/gm215-step-motor-motion-controller.html http://www.geckodrive.com/gm215-step-motor-motion-controller...
- chrischen 11y ago
  Yea I saw that stepper motor driver. It's $229, which is more than it cost to build this whole machine.
- chrischen 11y ago
  In the video it's being driven at 1/8th step. I'm considering switching to two servo motors and using a polar system. The problem is I need it to also be fast enough to fee lag free for the artist.
  - jxramos 11y ago
    But why can't the artist do their work in real time and get feedback digitally from the monitor and you then playback their strokes at a later time to do all the rendering/plotting. I can see how they may like to use the plotter medium for their feedback but all the noise I would think would be distracting.
    - chrischen 11y ago
      That's definitely something we're working on. To be honest it's not very hard. I'd just modify the capture script to capture pen and pressure input and turn it into vectors, instead of capturing movement from the robot like it is now. The problem though is that the actual brush strokes are different from a brush stroke generated in Photoshop. Controlling the machine lets them see the final output in real time, so they can paint it more like a real physical painting, and then the robot can reproduce the physical painting. I think in the next demo it'll be more evident the difference between lines on the computer and physically rendered brush strokes.
      - jxramos 11y ago
        Aha, yes in the prototyping stage that sort of immediate feedback would prove useful to converge upon the modeling necessary to properly translate the brush stroke pressure from the tablet into accurate saturation on the canvas. My comment was assuming that sort of translation was in place, but if you're discovering it then they would have to train the device. Which is an interesting thing, maybe apply machine learning to train the device much like how Andrew Ng and team trained that helicopter to fly upside down.
        chrischen 11y ago
        Also I tried to design this based on real-life applications. Digital artwork is never designed to be produced physically, and physical artwork is done physically with real-time feedback loop from observing the brushwork and colors. That being said, turning digital artwork into physical is still an interesting problem domain since artists can't be expected to all come wield my machine. I'd like an artist to be able to remotely work the machine in some manner.
  - 542458 11y ago
    You can get good 1/32 drivers like the DRV8825 (https://www.pololu.com/product/2133 https://www.pololu.com/product/2133) for not too much - I'm pretty confident they'll be able to do what you need (You can buy knockoffs for even cheaper). Even 1/16 is pretty dang smooth. It also might be that you're supplying too much or too little current to the motors - both will result in jerkiness and noise. If your current drivers are current limiting, I'd look into tuning that. If they aren't, the ones I linked are.
    - chrischen 11y ago
      They are current limiting and can go down to 1/16 step I believe. However, even at the current settings the motors can't keep up if the artist whips their arm from one side to the other.
vanattab 11y ago
If the problem is to smooth to input data coming from the Wacom device you can try using a low pass butterworth filter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterworth_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterworth_filter I have used this to good effect for smoothing head tracker data.
- chrischen 11y ago
  The problem isn't the wacom data. The issue is with moving the motor smoothly when the next step is uncertain.
  - tlarkworthy 11y ago
    delay it a bit then
bliti 11y ago
What type of drive gears/belts are you using?
- chrischen 11y ago
  It's just a rubber belt hooked onto some stepper motors. No gears. The drivers are doing the micro stepping for me.
  - bliti 11y ago
    I've had luck using gears to introduce a reduction in movement by increasing the final drive ratio. The motors will move at faster speeds but the gears slow down the process and allow the movement to be more precise. Dunno how it would affect your robot since you have a direct 1:1 connection with the tablet.
    - chrischen 11y ago
      Yea that's the main problem. Ramping the motor is a solved problem, but because I'm getting real time data and latency is an issue, the microcontroller doesn't know if the next step is going to stop or change direction or speed up.
      - bliti 11y ago
        What brand steppers do you have?
        chrischen 11y ago
        They're these. I don't think they have a brand. http://www.makeblock.cc/42byg-stepper-motor/ http://www.makeblock.cc/42byg-stepper-motor/
        bliti 11y ago
        I've never had good luck with the cheap ones. I use the numa with a built in transmission. Here is a link as a an example, I've never bought from the his place :http://omc-stepperonline.kancart.com/categories/4#!1 http://omc-stepperonline.kancart.com/categories/4#!1
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
The usual solution is a proportional-integral-differential (PDI) controller driven by position measurements. The system has a resonant frequency that depends on the damping, mass of the motor, and brush friction. Those set a hard limit on the maximum possible speed. PDI will get you close to that speed, but there's always going to be a trade-off between speed and accuracy. From the test, you're still quite a way out from perfect repeatability. (I prefer the automated version, because the smoother strokes look slightly better.) I suspect you'll find that PDI with a thicker medium like oils/acrylics will be harder because the brush friction will be less consistent. And in fact real paintings are often created with a range of brush sizes and perhaps a range of palette knives - so building a robot to handle all of that isn't going to be trivial.
- LukeShu 11y ago
  The first time you wrote "PDI", I assumed it was a typo for "PID", but you kept writing it. I'm curious, what's your background that you know it as "PDI"?
  - chucksmash 11y ago
    "The usual solution is a proportional-integral-differential (PDI) controller driven by position measurements."

tlb 11y ago

You either need microstepping or servo motors with encoder feedback. Microstepping drives like [0] are buttery smooth. [0] http://www.geckodrive.com/gm215-step-motor-motion-controller.html http://www.geckodrive.com/gm215-step-motor-motion-controller...

chrischen 11y ago
Yea I saw that stepper motor driver. It's $229, which is more than it cost to build this whole machine.
chrischen 11y ago
In the video it's being driven at 1/8th step. I'm considering switching to two servo motors and using a polar system. The problem is I need it to also be fast enough to fee lag free for the artist.
- jxramos 11y ago
  But why can't the artist do their work in real time and get feedback digitally from the monitor and you then playback their strokes at a later time to do all the rendering/plotting. I can see how they may like to use the plotter medium for their feedback but all the noise I would think would be distracting.
  - chrischen 11y ago
    That's definitely something we're working on. To be honest it's not very hard. I'd just modify the capture script to capture pen and pressure input and turn it into vectors, instead of capturing movement from the robot like it is now. The problem though is that the actual brush strokes are different from a brush stroke generated in Photoshop. Controlling the machine lets them see the final output in real time, so they can paint it more like a real physical painting, and then the robot can reproduce the physical painting. I think in the next demo it'll be more evident the difference between lines on the computer and physically rendered brush strokes.
    - jxramos 11y ago
      Aha, yes in the prototyping stage that sort of immediate feedback would prove useful to converge upon the modeling necessary to properly translate the brush stroke pressure from the tablet into accurate saturation on the canvas. My comment was assuming that sort of translation was in place, but if you're discovering it then they would have to train the device. Which is an interesting thing, maybe apply machine learning to train the device much like how Andrew Ng and team trained that helicopter to fly upside down.
      - chrischen 11y ago
        Also I tried to design this based on real-life applications. Digital artwork is never designed to be produced physically, and physical artwork is done physically with real-time feedback loop from observing the brushwork and colors. That being said, turning digital artwork into physical is still an interesting problem domain since artists can't be expected to all come wield my machine. I'd like an artist to be able to remotely work the machine in some manner.
- 542458 11y ago
  You can get good 1/32 drivers like the DRV8825 (https://www.pololu.com/product/2133 https://www.pololu.com/product/2133) for not too much - I'm pretty confident they'll be able to do what you need (You can buy knockoffs for even cheaper). Even 1/16 is pretty dang smooth. It also might be that you're supplying too much or too little current to the motors - both will result in jerkiness and noise. If your current drivers are current limiting, I'd look into tuning that. If they aren't, the ones I linked are.
  - chrischen 11y ago
    They are current limiting and can go down to 1/16 step I believe. However, even at the current settings the motors can't keep up if the artist whips their arm from one side to the other.

vanattab 11y ago

If the problem is to smooth to input data coming from the Wacom device you can try using a low pass butterworth filter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterworth_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterworth_filter I have used this to good effect for smoothing head tracker data.

chrischen 11y ago
The problem isn't the wacom data. The issue is with moving the motor smoothly when the next step is uncertain.
- tlarkworthy 11y ago
  delay it a bit then

bliti 11y ago

What type of drive gears/belts are you using?

chrischen 11y ago
It's just a rubber belt hooked onto some stepper motors. No gears. The drivers are doing the micro stepping for me.
- bliti 11y ago
  I've had luck using gears to introduce a reduction in movement by increasing the final drive ratio. The motors will move at faster speeds but the gears slow down the process and allow the movement to be more precise. Dunno how it would affect your robot since you have a direct 1:1 connection with the tablet.
  - chrischen 11y ago
    Yea that's the main problem. Ramping the motor is a solved problem, but because I'm getting real time data and latency is an issue, the microcontroller doesn't know if the next step is going to stop or change direction or speed up.
    - bliti 11y ago
      What brand steppers do you have?
      - chrischen 11y ago
        They're these. I don't think they have a brand. http://www.makeblock.cc/42byg-stepper-motor/ http://www.makeblock.cc/42byg-stepper-motor/
        bliti 11y ago
        I've never had good luck with the cheap ones. I use the numa with a built in transmission. Here is a link as a an example, I've never bought from the his place :http://omc-stepperonline.kancart.com/categories/4#!1 http://omc-stepperonline.kancart.com/categories/4#!1

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

The usual solution is a proportional-integral-differential (PDI) controller driven by position measurements. The system has a resonant frequency that depends on the damping, mass of the motor, and brush friction. Those set a hard limit on the maximum possible speed. PDI will get you close to that speed, but there's always going to be a trade-off between speed and accuracy. From the test, you're still quite a way out from perfect repeatability. (I prefer the automated version, because the smoother strokes look slightly better.) I suspect you'll find that PDI with a thicker medium like oils/acrylics will be harder because the brush friction will be less consistent. And in fact real paintings are often created with a range of brush sizes and perhaps a range of palette knives - so building a robot to handle all of that isn't going to be trivial.

LukeShu 11y ago
The first time you wrote "PDI", I assumed it was a typo for "PID", but you kept writing it. I'm curious, what's your background that you know it as "PDI"?
- chucksmash 11y ago
  "The usual solution is a proportional-integral-differential (PDI) controller driven by position measurements."