Subject:
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Re: Building Competition LEGO Robots
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto
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Date:
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Wed, 14 May 2003 21:06:50 GMT
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Viewed:
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450 times
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On Wed, 14 May 2003 19:36:37 +0000, Chris Magno wrote:
>
>
> > Remember: A robot is complete not when there is nothing left to add,
> > but rather when there is nothing left to take away.
>
> I like this quote.
>
> I cant live by it... but it is a great quote. whose is it?
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint Exupery
Actually, as the builder of one of the bots that kept falling off (the
only one?) I feel qualified to comment.
When I built "My Hill", I spent a great deal more time trying to build
something that would get on top than on figuring out what to do once it
was on top. Earlier revisions tried to rely on a "clever" mechanism to
transfer power from the treads on the main unit to the wheels on the
carriage. Much time was wasted until I finally just put a separate motor
on the carriage. So there is lesson #1: use your build time wisely. And
the KISS rule arises to the occasion here too: if you can't make that damn
"clever" mechanism work, stop. Sometimes it's worth sacrificing a RCX port
to cut out a fiddly mechanism. This is why computers are taking over the
world.
Having wasted my time developing the "get on top" phase (i.e. the
carriage), I did not have any time to develop the "what to do once on top"
problem. So I literally just threw in a program the night before
rtlToronto13, to simply wander around until an edge was detected, backup a
moment, turn, and then drive forward again. This is the price I paid for
not using my build time well, and there is lesson #2: don't do dumb
things. In this case, doing nothing would have been better than doing that
poorly developed idea.
Lesson #3 would be, of course: test early, and test often.
On the other hand, my rtlToronto13 robot did something well, and that was
to get on top of the hill reasonably quickly. Not as fast as John's or
Steve's, but faster than Bruce's.
Would have been great if it didn't get off the hill just as quickly :-)
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