Subject:
|
January 31st SMART meeting notes
|
Newsgroups:
|
lugnet.org.us.smart
|
Date:
|
Thu, 5 Feb 2004 01:33:52 GMT
|
Viewed:
|
2431 times
|
| |
|
|
At last Saturday's SMART meeting we had a bunch of people coming for the first
time: welcome! Even more impressive, a number of them brought robots! I've
posted a few meeting pictures at:
<http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=71280>
The mini-challenge was to build a robot that could manipulate crates or balls
like the robots in our recent Crate Contraption. We had some very interesting
new "crate" or "ball" robots that people brought.
For instance, Alex brought a robot that would pick up loose balls that were
rolling around. It had a very interesting way to do this: balls would enter the
front of the robot on a ramp, and whenever the robot encountered a wall (or
other stationary robot, I presume) the front wheels would drive up the wall a
short distance to make the balls roll into the back of the robot. Very
interesting!
<http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=646852>
Patrick brought an extremely ingenious robot arm. (Put some of us older folks to
shame, he did!) Not only could the arm swing around to pick up crates and put
them back down again, but it was able to rotate its wrist so that it could dump
the balls out of the crate into a hopper, or whatever was desired. The
mechanical engineering that went into this is astounding! I'm looking forward to
seeing some more of his creations in the future. And I'd certainly welcome a
more detailed description of the arm with some closeup pictures of the
mechanisms!
<http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=646853>
Jonathan brought a very cool crane that could pick up crates and put them down
again in five different locations, for instance between multiple rail lines, or
trucks, etc. We had a few suggestions on how he could make the crane more
robust, until we found out that it used just about all the Lego that he has in
his collection! Someone needs to buy this kid some more Lego!
<http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=646851>
Gus brought a dump truck that can do line tracking both forwards and backwards.
Going forwards is pretty standard line-tracking, but I don't think I've ever
seen a robot that can track the line going forwards and then back up, and
certainly not one that uses steering. The trick Gus used was to put a light
sensor at the back of his truck mounted on a pivot that was mechanically
connected to the steering. Clever!
<http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=646859>
Mark brought a new type of ball sorter, one that would drop the two different
types of balls into crates on rail lines. When a crate is considered 'full', it
signals the rail line rcx to go, and waits until a new car arrives before
sorting any more balls.
<http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=646850>
And I brought a flat-bed truck that could move crates around between other
robots. I also demonstrated a number of mechanisms that manipulate individual
balls.
Crate Contraption v 2.0:
-----------------------
SMART is going to display version 2 of the Crate Contraption at Crossroads
Shopping Center on Saturday, February 28th. We'd very much like to have some of
the new robots that we saw (as well as any others that didn't make it to the
meeting) be part of our display. There is a fairly significant time commitment
that will be required, though. First of all, we need to get together to plan how
the various robots will interact with each other. We'll do this the 21st of
February, location to be announced in a week or so. This will minimally take a
few hours (say three or four) but may take longer. Also, the show at Crossroads
will be from 10am to 5pm, and your robot will need to operate the entire time of
the display. This means that you'll have to be there for at least most of the
day. It also means that your robot needs to be fairly reliable unless you want
to baby-sit it continuously! If you are willing to participate, please email me
(remove the spam-block from my email address) in the next few days.
Also on the 28th, at Crossroads Shopping Center, we'll be holding a kids'
robotic competition. If you're going to school (grades 1 to 12) you're not only
welcome, but encouraged to participate in one of two events that we'll be
holding. The two events are a tug-of-war, and edge tracking. Check out the rules
at <http://www.quest-solutions.com/smart/>.
Next meeting:
------------
Before I talk about what the mini-challenge will be for the next meeting, I
should mention that there's going to be a new meeting place for SMART. For the
next few meetings at least, we're going to meet at DigiPen. This is only a mile
or so from the Redmond Library where we usually meet, and it's right off SR-520,
so it's even easier to get to. They've got great facilities, and have offered to
let us use them. If we don't think this is working out after a while, we can go
back to meeting at the library. But there are a number of benefits to meeting
there. First off, it's a consistent place to meet. Sometimes we aren't able to
get the same library room. This won't be a problem at the new location. Also by
meeting there we'll have some new people that will be attending SMART meetings.
First there is a 4-H robotics club that is meeting there, and they'll be coming
to our meetings. Also DigiPen is starting a couple of robotics courses, and so
it's possible that some of their students will be interested in coming as well.
I'll remind everyone of the new location as we get closer to the next meeting,
but if you'd like to see a map already, I've put one here:
<http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Maps/digipen.gif>
Next mini-challenge:
-------------------
For our next meeting, we voted on doing another crate-related robot. The idea
will be to build two robots that look for each other, and pass a crate from one
to the next. While the most obvious way to do this is with two RCXs, it can also
be done with one by having a stationary "robot" as the second one. I suggest
starting to work on this challenge by figuring out how the two robots can find
each other. Once you've got that figured out, then work out how to get them to
'face' each other, and then pass a crate back and forth.
You are welcome to determine how far apart your own two robots should be to
start with, but if you're looking for some guidance, I'd suggest having them
about 10 to 12 feet apart, and oriented randomly to each other (that is, don't
assume they're facing each other when you put them down). As with all
mini-challenges, feel free to bring whatever you can get working. And even if
you can't get anything working, you can still bring whatever you have, to get
ideas and help from others that show up.
--
David Schilling
|
|
1 Message in This Thread:
- Entire Thread on One Page:
- Nested:
All | Brief | Compact | Dots
Linear:
All | Brief | Compact
|
|
|
|
