Subject:
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E3 Mindstorms Mayhem!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Wed, 16 May 2001 18:11:02 GMT
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Viewed:
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679 times
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Well, tonight I'm off to LA, for I shall be playing at the E3 trade show all
day tomorrow. E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo (e3expo.com), a trade
show of mostly video & computer games, plus other toys & fun stuff,
including a large presence by LEGO (both software & Mindstorms).
With help from Switzer Communcations (www.switz.com) LEGO put together
another fun event like RoboGladiators from E3 in 99
(http://www.infernolab.com/gallery/2agallery.html).
This time around, it's Mindstorms Mayhem, a ping pong ball-gathering game,
with a bit of contact & robot "interaction" involved (hence the Mayhem), to
showcase Mindstorms RIS 2.0. I got a "for internal use only" copy of the
new 2.0 software. It's quite similar to 1.0 (never saw 1.5), but definitely
a lot slicker & easier for people to pick up, I predict. Unfortunately, the
kits we used were 1.0 kits, so I didn't see any new parts or the new USB IR
tower that's shown in the software.
We were under orders to keep it simple & small this time--no huge 15lb bots
with 60 AA batteries & 18V power hacks. Just the RCX for power.
Since I have way too many Mindstorms kits (7 so far), I had more than enough
parts to make 2 bots: Itchy & Scratchy.
Itchy:
http://www.infernolab.com/gfx/lego/itchy1.jpg
http://www.infernolab.com/gfx/lego/itchy2.jpg
In an attempt to get my girlfriend involved in my robots & to be able to
spend time with her while doing bot stuff, I had her build something for me.
She made the hoop/weapon for Itchy (and the red-head biker babe driver) and
got frustrated enough with that, so it was up to me to build a bot around
it. The hoop raises & lowers *very* fast, allowing it to capture balls,
drag them to my base, and release. Or, I can set it to "berserker mode"
where the hoop pounds up & down viciously continuously as Itchy drives around.
Scratchy:
http://www.infernolab.com/gfx/lego/scratchy1.jpg
http://www.infernolab.com/gfx/lego/scratchy2.jpg
Scratchy was the 1st bot I developed for Mindstorms Mayhem. Yes, it looks
and acts a heck of a lot like Nightmare from BattleBots--a nod of the hat to
Jim Smentowski for inspiration. Scratchy started with more of a wheat
harvester idea, with a spinning claw to bat the balls around, whack the
other bots, & hopefully throw ping pong balls out of the arena & into the
audience. The motors spun it up to about 900 RPM (monitored with the
tachometer sitting on top of the RCX), but it didn't have enough mass. So,
I made a big fat solid "wheel", including 2 of the heavy metal bricks. RPM
kicked down to about 600-700, but it can knock a ping pong ball-sized
crumpled-up ice cream bar wrapper about 15 feet. Much better. It's all
about the polar moment of inertia. On the back of Scratchy is a pair of
wheelie riders so he doesn't flip over, and a pair of bars to corral balls
and push them to my base.
Tesseract:
http://www.infernolab.com/gallery/tesseractgallery.html
Since Tesseract never had a chance to fight, I'll bring him along to demo.
Then I can finally retire him & free up those 27 motors & 8 battery boxes
for future projects.
All bots run on infrared control, using the joystick from Tesseract.
I'll be at E3 all day Thursday--if you're there, swing by the LEGO booth to
check out the mayhem! Mayhem should continue on Fri & Sat, too, but I'll be
too busy with about a million other robot-related commitments.
-Jason
www.infernolab.com
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