ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

I keep ending up with a list of things to mention, but not enough time to do it (or not enough material for a full post), so here's a brief roundup of a few things. So in no particular order... The HALE mission has put out a nice YouTube video, showcasing some of the video as well as the still photos from the ground team end of the mission. It also gives (at the end) a run-down of some of the faces & names involved. Take a look, and enjoy the music & presentation. HALE YouTube Mission Steve Hassenplug has come up with a novel robotics game he's named "PSumo" (for "programmable sumo"). The idea isn't to make fantastically complicated or fast sumo robots, but instead to make a series of nearly equal robots that casual observers can "program" by using RFID cards swiped by a sensor on the robot. It was a huge hit at the recent Brickfair event on the east coast, and I'm sure we'll see it a lot of other places. We'll probably have...

Watching a typical multi-degree-of-freedom robotic arm can be a joy. Separate from precision welding on car frames, they sometimes seem to have a life of their own, and the way they seem to dance and flow is almost mesmerizing in some cases. PnP ("Pick and Place") was built for a couple of reasons - first, because it was fun, and second, because a number of folks seemed to think it would be hard or impossible. It started as part of a challenge that involved building LEGO using only LEGO - a hard challenge in the first place, but we were trying to do it with only the parts available in a NXT kit. A lot of folks commented that this would be "very difficult" without some easy mechanism for linear motion, like gear racks... but I wasn't convinced. First, there were other ways to generate linear motion (lead screws, or certain mechanical linkages). And second, I wasn't sold that linear motion was required... so I set out to do it without linear motion, and using...