Thank you for those who came last night. A good turnout, some new faces and some interesting topics to talk about and things to see. Thanks too for those whose sent appologies, we can't all make every session. We are still fortunate to be able to use the Science Alive! facilities, so please keep your gold coin donations coming in, they are appreciated.
This is the first meeting that I (Richard Jones) have unlocked the room for, with Andrew having moved to Japan for a while. All went according to plan.
Organisational Developments since the last Meeting
We advertised the meeting to the New Zealand Electronicis Institute, the Bright Sparks organisation and Tait Electronics. Hopefully this approach will allow us to gently grow our numbers. Stimulating new thoughts and ideas. I would like to extend our advertising and will inform Christchurch Soar as our next meeting should be of interest to their members.
Also we have a prototype web site: http://groups.msn.com/chchrobotics
The web site has our programme, Science Alive directions, Table Top Challenge and Micromouse information. Either subscribe or send me your content if you would like to have information posted.
Attending Robots and Topics
Peter Harris brought along his Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. It was great. We saw it perform on table tops without falling off. We saw it navigate around many obstacles without getting stuck. We saw it concentrate on areas of floor that we told it needed full attention. It spiralled out, and spiralled back. We saw it pick up our biscuit crumbs. We saw it needing to be emptied. And watched it search for home and go back there for recharging. And yes we took it to pieces and re-assembled it, and it was fully functional again. (After a technical tap!)
Carl Ranson showed us his chunky robot propelled with car window winder motors, furniture casters for support, 10A H bridges and SLA for drive with his laptop for brains and 3 sharp IR distance measuring devices. The laptop had a nice mimic of the sensor view and it chugged around the room bumping into thin chair legs but avoiding upturned chairs nicely. Carl also showed some more developments on Hough transforms using his laptop, and is closer to reading bar codes with them and maybe poised for robotic vision.
Peter Morris showed his table top challenge robot named 'Hugo' still reliably staying on the table, finding the fluorescent cube and pushing it off. This is a very fine piece of work and is a delight to see in action. Peter also showed us his Nixie Tube clock, constructed on glass fibre PCBs. We were all very respectful of the 180V running round the PCBs.
And I showed the Micromouse Maze simulator running in Python on PC and MAC. It can now edit mazes, solve the best route problem in any maze with either 90 or 45 degree turns. Next I will train it to explore the maze in competition style, and publish the code.
Statistics
10 In Attendance including 2 partners and 1 chauffeur
5 first timers, 5 been before.
3 from Tait Electronics
1 from Canterbury University
1 from Bright Sparks/Burnside High
10~ Biscuits eaten
3 Robots Moving
$11 Collection
Next Meeting Wed 17th October 7.30pm Seminar Room
GPS Boomerang presentation by Synco Reynders
Robotics Software Programming – Anyone
Show new and old members how you program your 'bot.
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