Subject:
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May 2002 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, 19 May 2002 02:49:29 GMT
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Viewed:
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1575 times
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Today's SMART meeting was a tremendous success. Several dozen people showed
up. At least seven people brought robots for the mini-challenge - locating a
100-watt lightbulb near the floor. Most of them were able to find the light
even when it was not directly visible at first.
There were a lot of new people who came to visit, and several who were here
only for the last two meetings. Welcome! We hope you enjoyed yourself, met a
lot of fellow LEGO-robot enthusiasts, and learned a lot. We look forward to
seeing you at our future meetings.
There was a lot of discussion about future directions for SMART. Here's some
of the things we talked about.
Exhibit Robots
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We were encouraged to think about what type of robot would be cool to show
others. Something fun to watch or use. Something that will get people
interested in LEGO robots, and our club. We'll start looking for
opportunities in the coming months, so start thinking what would be an
interesting robot to show others. One opportunity might be a joint
exhibition with the other LEGO clubs in the Seattle area in October or November.
Rube-Goldberg Contraptions
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Someone suggested an interesting idea both as a challenge for SMART, as well
as a potentially really cool exhibit robot. Each participant would build a
robot that does something silly and complicated with, say, a ping-pong ball.
It will receive the ping-pong ball from the machine on one side, and
eventually needs to pass it to the machine on the other side. An 'interface
standard' would be determined: exactly where the ball will come from, where
it will be placed when done, and the maximum time the robot has. But what
you do with it is completely up to you.
Another suggestion was to pass messages back and forth in addition to the
ball (or whatever objects are decided on). The robot would then react to the
message by doing something equally silly, and pass the message further down
the line.
Brick Heap Wars
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For our September meeting we decided instead of having a regular
mini-challenge, we'd hold a BrickHeap Wars. You won't need to bring
anything; just get into 4 teams before the meeting (which will start at
least an hour earlier to give enough time) and the challenge will be
announced then. Bricks, sensors, and RCXs will be provided for the teams. A
few people will be asked to provide laptops for programming, however. One
thing we'll have to do is figure out ways to make fair teams. Does anyone
have ideas?
Maxi-Challenge
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We also decided that in September or November we'll come up with a bigger
challenge for next May's meeting. That gives a lot of lead time, so the
challenge can be considerably more complex than any we've done before. Once
the idea has been chosen, for the next few months we'll bring our robots for
both the mini-challenge for that meeting, as well as what we've done for the
larger challenge. This will give plenty of opportunities to discuss how to
solve problems, and make our robots better. Potential challenges were to a
variation on puck gathering, a maze solver, or a 'gap crosser'. Let's get
some more ideas, post them in this news group, and we'll vote on which one
to chose in September or November.
July's Meeting
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Our next meeting will be on July 27th, same place and time (room 2 of the
Redmond Regional Library, at 2pm). The mini-challenge chosen by people
attending today's meeting will be quite challenging, I think. Build a robot
that can walk from the starting line to the finishing line, across or around
a number of scattered two-by-fours which will be placed on edge. No rotating
wheels may touch the ground. The start and finish lines will be reflective
white tape, and be approximately eight feet apart. The 2x4's will be placed
no closer than 8 inches apart, giving enough room to navigate around, should
you want to attempt to solve the challenge that way.
Best of luck to all the people accepting this challenge! I suggest you start
building early for this one.
--
David Schilling
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