Subject:
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February 23rd, 2008 SMART meeting
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.us.smart
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Date:
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Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:22:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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9396 times
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Thanks to all who showed up at the last meeting. We had a few people who brought
working rope crossing robots. None crossed successfully from one table clear to
the other, but the point behind our mini-challenges is to do as much as you feel
challenged to do, and the parts that were attempted were very well done!
Patrick’s robot didn’t drive across, but was able to very handily pull itself
onto the finishing table once it was there. It featured a clamp that would hold
onto the table edge, and then in a two step process, fold part of itself onto
the table top, then pulling the second half up. Very nicely done! Craig’s robot
had a similar idea. It could move across on the rope as well, but structurally
wasn’t quite strong enough to pull up its own mass.
We also had a great time improving our racing robots. The progress from the
beginning of the meeting to the end was astounding for several of the robots!
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=298963
Patrick’s rope crosser:
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Meetings/2008-01/Videos/divxcimg1454.avi
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Meetings/2008-01/Videos/divxcimg1457.avi
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Meetings/2008-01/Videos/divxcimg1475.avi
Craig’s rope crosser:
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Meetings/2008-01/Videos/divxcimg1469.avi
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Meetings/2008-01/Videos/divxcimg1480.avi
Racing robots: (the first one’s a quick overview of the robots, the others are
longer, including numerous examples of one particular robot that didn’t want to
stay upright!)
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Meetings/2008-01/Videos/divxcimg1491.avi
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Meetings/2008-01/Videos/divxcimg1482.avi
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Meetings/2008-01/Videos/divxcimg1489.avi
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Meetings/2008-01/Videos/divxcimg1490.avi
As to our next meeting, it will take place at 2pm as usual, on February 23rd,
(wow, only two weeks away!) at Digipen. The racing track will be available for
people to test and improve their robots, and perhaps we’ll even have a couple of
actual races! Several people asked me if they can have one more chance at rope
crossing as a mini-challenge as well. Since the rope doesn’t take up much space,
I’ll bring it.
Our ‘main’ mini-challenge will be to build Easter-egg hunting robots. Besides
being a good mini-challenge, these robots can then be shown at our display which
we will put on at a local mall on Easter weekend -- kids coming to watch will
gladly devour the eggs! Exact details about the show to follow, but we’ll be
showing the robots on Saturday March 22 from approximately 10am to approximately
5pm.
The mini-challenge is to build a robot that will pick up no more than a couple
of chocolate Easter eggs (one is fine), and deposit them over the edge of the
arena. The arena will be 4’x8’, will probably contain a building or two to
navigate around, and will have 2” to 2 1/4” high walls around it. The floor of
the arena will be white, so one way (though not necessarily the best way) to
detect the eggs would be to use a light sensor looking down. While eggs will be
scattered over the entire arena, robots should look for only a few, and then
deposit them over the edge of the arena.
The eggs we’ll be using are Hershey’s solid milk chocolate eggs:
You should be able to start finding these in stores after Valentines day is
over.
Here are a couple of pictures of what the eggs look like, with a few LEGO pieces
for size:
And here are a couple of pictures of what the arena will resemble. (Not exactly
like this, but pretty close):
Looking forward to seeing everyone at the meeting!
--
David Schilling
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: February 23rd, 2008 SMART meeting
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| Just a reminder about the meeting this Saturday at DigiPen at 2pm. We'll be preparing for our Easter egg hunt next month, as well as doing our racing grand challenge. See the previous message for details. -- David Schilling (17 years ago, 21-Feb-08, to lugnet.org.us.smart, FTX)
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