Subject:
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May 17th 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, 18 May 2003 01:20:33 GMT
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Today, perhaps because of the nice weather, or perhaps because we met at the
Bellevue library instead of our usual location, the number of people who
attended the SMART meeting was down, as were the number of robots that
showed up. But those who did show up, had a lot of fun.
If there was a prize for our Grand Challenge, it would go to Mark Kenworthy,
who's robot was extremely consistent in tracking the figure-8 path, and beat
the next robot (mine) mainly because mine wasn't as consistent, and would
occasionally get confused, darting down the wrong lobe of the figure-8.
Congratulations, Mark!
I am open to bringing the figure-8 arena to the next meeting, but only if
someone is going to bring a robot, so if you didn't get a chance to try your
robot out, post a reply to this message here in our group, and I'll bring
the arena.
Our mini-challenge was Maxwell's Demons. This is quite a difficult
challenge, and while there were a couple of robots, none of them performed
flawlessly. Perhaps all the perfect robots that could have solved the
challenge with an arm tied behind their backs belonged to the people who
were outside enjoying the nice weather? :-)
Coming up in our calendar this summer are these three events:
First, on June 28th we'll be doing a show at Crossroads Shopping Center from
10am to 5pm. We'll be hosting some robot competitions for kids (check out
http://www.quest-solutions.com/SMART/ for details about the competitions).
But we'll also be displaying as many of our robot creations as we can. We'd
like to put on a tremendous display for the public, so I hope that everyone
can make it to this event, and spend a couple of hours, or perhaps the whole
day, showing your robots off. Let's have a ton of robots there! If you can
only drop off robots, that would be great, but it would be better if you can
spend a few hours demonstrating it and answering questions about it as well.
Second is the next SMART meeting on July 26th, back at our usual location at
the Redmond library. The mini-challenge we voted on was to build a robot
that can cross an arbitrary gap (a few feet, at least) between two tables,
which has a rope strung fairly taunt between them. Robots start on one table
(you can place it anywhere, straddling the rope, if you like) and if
possible, your robot should end *on* the other table. You can buy a sample
of the rope I'll bring at Home Depot for 14¢/foot. It's a 1/4-inch nylon
solid braid rope. Look for the code C387-920 or SNR812. (This is also the
same rope used for the tug of war children's competition at Crossroads.) Of
course you are also welcome to bring any other rope you'd like to use.
To starter with, build a robot that can get onto the rope, and cross *to*
the second table and stop. More advanced robots will then figure out a way
to get onto the table. And for a ton of extra credits, see if you can work
out a way to get across the rope keeping your center of gravity above the
rope - tightrope walking with a pole, or some other mechanism of balancing
will probably be required.
The final event this summer will be our participation with the other
Seattle-area LEGO clubs (PNLTC and SEALUG) at the Lego Road Show. I still
don't have a time or place for this, but it will be somewhere in August or
September. I'll post as I get more details.
--
David Schilling
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