#robo-one

OmniCovered (2004) by Takeshi Maeda, Vstone, Osaka. OmniCovered is a bipedal humanoid competition robot developed for ROBO-ONE 6. Instead of aluminium sheet metal, it has a fibreglass reinforced plastic (FRP) frame, with a white exterior made of laminated ABS resin. It uses new Hitec HSR-5995TG ultra-torque robot servos, and the image processing required the faster Renesas 40MHz 32-bit SH-2 CPU. Its chest bears the autograph of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, who was impressed when he saw another of Takeshi Maeda's robots in Tokyu Hands (東急ハンズ, Tōkyū Hanzu), a chain of Japanese hobby stores.

"Saturday, qualifying round. Dual sword fighting, image processing balloon popping, and 15cm climbing were all successful, but I ended up in 2nd place. I lost to A-Do again… If I think about it, I was also arrogant, thinking that if all the demonstrations were successful, along with the monocoque exterior, I would be able to qualify for first place. … Sunday, main game. He was suddenly hit by the robot equipped with the Dynamixel servos (ROBOTIS) that I was afraid of, and was defeated in the first round." – Takeshi Maeda, Robotan Production Diary.

OmniHead (2003) by Takeshi Maeda, Vstone, Osaka. OmniHead is a bipedal humanoid competition robot, developed for the ROBO-ONE 4 contest.  Specialist servos for robots had not been yet been developed, so it's based on the SANWA ERG-VB designed for radio-controlled cars. The CPU is a 16MHz Hitachi H8.

"Around August 2002 I went to see the 2nd ROBO-ONE tournament and started to think it would be much more fun to participate than to watch. The current idea is as follows. It will use radio-controlled servos; Initially, I'll use the servos as is, but eventually I would like to control the motor current myself from the internal potentiometer value. Start with 6 degrees of freedom x 2 on one leg, add 2 degrees of freedom at the waist, and add 2 degrees of freedom on each arm with 4 degrees of freedom. I want to make the knee and ankle front and rear axes double joints to create a 'soft-body robot.' … It's challenging to participate in Robo-One because I'm so busy with work and a crying creature comes to my house at night, but I ended up being able to spend about 1.5 days out of my three-day weekend working on the robot. … I was able to attach an omnidirectional camera and called it "omni-head." – Takeshi Maeda, Robotan Production Diary.

OmniStriker (2003) by Takeshi Maeda, Vstone, Osaka. OmniStriker is a bipedal humanoid competition robot, entered into ROBO-ONE 5. It's a variation on OmniDream, using JR DS8511 servos made for model aeroplanes. One hand is a gripper that can grab things, while the other hand can expand and contract to throw a punch. The same size as OmniDream, OmniStriker is much lighter at 2.5kg.

"So, I don't want to send the same robot to the ROBO-ONE NBC CUP, which is already tomorrow, so I tried adding a gripper. … with the addition of two servos, it became heavier, so I had to redo all the motions. The world's first (maybe) sword drawing motion. This is not the time to do something like this. Moreover, I wonder if there will be a demonstration at NBC CUP… Motions like this can't be used in actual combat, so it's meaningless without a demo. Speaking of what to do with a gripper, it's all about drawing a sword. This time I tried pulling it out from my waist instead of my back. And just like before, it's useless in actual combat. I need to learn how to walk before I do something like this… The only thing I could think of to do with a stretched hand was a punch with a long reach…" – Takeshi Maeda, Robotan Production Diary.

OmniZero.7 (2008) by Takeshi Maeda, Vstone, Osaka. "It doesn't really feel like it, but I finally won. Rather than practicing and winning with operating skills, I decided to win with brute force using an overwhelming robot, and in the end, I'm glad we went that route. I was able to make it all the way to the end, and I was able to get 2nd place in the qualifying demo, so even though I was running out of time and was in a hurry, I managed to achieve something. … Personally, I view ROBO-ONE as an amateur tournament, so to be honest, I feel like I went too far with my robot this time. 'Overdoing' and 'extreme' are things I always do. … If a weight limit is imposed on ROBO-ONE in the future, I would welcome it. Large, heavy robots are in themselves very dangerous, so if they were banned as a rule, it would be easier for participants. Personally, I'll lose the advantage I currently have, but I don't think it's a problem because I rebuild from scratch each time, according to the rules. If you know that you don't have to make a big and heavy robot, you're much happier." – Takeshi Maeda, Robotan Production Diary.

OmniZero.1 (2005) by Takeshi Maeda, Vstone, Osaka. Developed for ROBO-ONE 8, OmniZero.1 lacks the double-knee servo of its predecessor, but is stronger and heavier, and adds 1 degree of freedom at the toe.

"The robot that had been designed for the 8th tournament had somehow been completed, so we hurriedly moved up the schedule and introduced it. This time there is not much difference from the previous OmniZero. I added a toe shaft, and I used the same servo for the whole body including the arms… There are a lot of small fans attached. These guys eat about 3A in total, so I can't tell if they're cooling or heating." – Takeshi Maeda, Robotan Production Diary.

OmniDream (2003) by Takeshi Maeda, Vstone, Osaka. OmniDream is a bipedal humanoid competition robot, entered into the 2003 ROBO-ONE Bandai Cup. While OmniHead weighed 1.9 kg, OmniDream was extremely heavy at 3.5 kg, which made the heavyweight class at the time. It uses Hitec radio-controlled car servos, and the H8 processor.

"Slow progress making Robots, but now I've finally made a new model for the Bandai Cup. This time I had a tough schedule… It looks very similar to the previous robot, but the servos on the legs are slightly larger. The axis arrangement is almost the same as before, with 22 axes. This time, I had a lot of trouble moving the shoulder rotation axis servo to the body, and added an omnidirectional camera to the head, but it felt strange that the head is cylindrical. I feel like the word that best describes this feeling is 'uncool,' but I can't give up on it now. The problem is the hip joint. Pitch axis + yaw axis. This is where larger robots often break. I hope it holds out on the day…" – Takeshi Maeda, Robotan Production Diary.