Subject:
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March 2003 SMART Meeting Notes
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.us.smart
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Date:
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Sun, 30 Mar 2003 16:30:31 GMT
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Viewed:
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1808 times
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Yesterday's SMART meeting was awesome. Lots of people brought robots for the
rope climbing mini-challenge; there were at least four working Grand
Challenge (Figure-8) racers, and a large assortment of other robots as well.
I've posted pictures here: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=38685
It always amazes me how differently people attack the same problem. I didn't
think there were so many different ways to attempt the rope climbing
challenge, but all the robots used totally different methods of solving the
problem. Quite amazing was to see a couple of the robots not just driving up
to the rope and hoping to snag it, but feeding the rope into their innards!
One robot cleverly just grabbed the rope and pulled its weight up so that it
got the required height off the ground without doing any climbing at all,
and another robot had a cool ratcheting mechanism for climbing the rope.
Some of the 'assorted' robots that were demonstrated included a prototype
for robot that would pick up pop-cans, some walking robots, including a
couple of walking sumo robots (in preparation for the Workshop 3D RCX
Challenge in a few weeks), a token-finding robot (last meeting's
mini-challenge), an interesting holonomic platform, and several others.
This was the second meeting for the Grand Challenge, and we had a lot more
people bringing racers, plus most of them worked pretty well when they were
on the track alone. The next step in this challenge will be to sort out
those quirks that prevent a 'perfect' navigation, and handling other racers
on the track!
It was suggested that we have a couple of "Grand Challenge Workshops". I
think this is a really good idea. It will give people a chance to use the
arena without having to build one themselves for debugging, design
modifications, whatever, and will be a very informal way to discuss the
problem with others. I'll try to find a possible location(s) for this, but
if someone in our group has or already knows of a moderately large area we
can place the arena, with tables for building and programming available
nearby, please let me know. The arena (with walking space around) needs at
least a 16'x12' flat area, with some more space for people to set up their
stuff, etc. The thinking was to do this on a weeknight, say roughly every
second or third Monday night from 6pm to 9pm, for example. Obviously we'll
be flexible, and try to accommodate as many people as we can.
At the meeting we voted for the next mini-challenge: Maxwell's Demons. There
are some rules available here http://news.lugnet.com/org/us/smart/?n=22 for
how the game is played. These will be refined slightly for the
mini-challenge. I'll bring the arena to the aforementioned Workshops as
well, assuming there's enough room for it, so if you want to start building
a robot for this, you can test it out as well.
One of the things we talked about was the possibility of putting on a
display at Crossroads mall sometime in June. The robots that we build for
the mini-challenge and Grand Challenge are great as far as being fun for a
large public audience to watch. If you have any other interesting robots to
demonstrate, obviously they'd be welcome too. Even better, if you've been
thinking about building something interesting, but haven't had a valid
reason to spend the time yet, now you do!
The next meeting will be May 17th at the **Bellevue** library.
As for the Grand Challenge Workshops, I'll post details as soon as we have a
time and place.
--
David Schilling
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