Thank you to those who came on Wednesday. A record turnout, some new faces and some new robots and very interesting topics to talk about and things to see. Thanks too for those who sent apologies, we can't all make every session. We are still fortunate to be able to use the Science Alive facilities, so please keep putting your gold coin donations into the tin, they are appreciated.
Organisational Developments since the last Meeting
Advertising and word of mouth is growing our numbers. Please send me any ideas that you may have for publicity, or just do it! I’ll bring some publicity sheets to the next meeting for new members to take away so that they have contact details for us.
Our prototype web site: http://groups.msn.com/chchrobotics has some photos of Wednesday’s session. Subscribe or send me your content if you would like to have information posted. We have had an offer of help with an improved web site and hosting in return for some publicity. More news soon.
Attending Robots and Topics
Synco Reynders gave us a fascinating talk about the development and operation of his GPS Boomerang with videos of media coverage and some experimental flights. See http://www.gpsboomerang.com/ for more details and prices.
Hanno Sander brought a wonderful balancing robot that uses accelerometers and gyros and a parallax propeller array processor to balance on two wheels and dance. The bot leans back before driving forwards, and has a neat trick if the motors cannot meet the demand. Have a look at Hanno’s site http://mydancebot.com. There are some pics from Hanno here: http://groups.msn.com/chchrobotics/shoebox.msnw.
Peter Harris brought along his Robot Lawnmower. Still under development but moving nicely under radio control. Heaps of sealed lead acid batteries, huge FET H bridges and a neat tendancy to stand on its stabilizer wheel. This looks like a bot not to be messed with.
Carl Ranson brought along some tiny DC motors to give away, thanks Carl.
Peter Morris showed his table top challenge robot named 'Hugo' adapted for line following which it did very nicely. Anyone up for line following races next session?
Steve Graham bought an optical stepper motor driven scanning table with a laser line for capturing 3D images on computer that can then be used for direct fabrication.
Richard Jones brought a micromouse maze simulation written in Python now moving and turning in the maze competition style, and a DSL modem to be adapted for robotics using openwrt. See http://openwrt.org/
All told a very lively and interesting session. If I’ve missed anything or corrections are required just email the group. Thanks to all who came.
Next Meeting
Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 19th December 7.30pm Seminar Room (Note the change back to our normal venue). Bring a xmas fare plate and some robots to talk about. With no main topic we can divide our attention appropriately to each bot that comes along.
Statistics
16 In Attendance including 1 partner, 1 chauffeur, 1 guest
6 first timers, 10 been before.
5 from Tait Electronics
1 from Canterbury University
2 from Bright Sparks
~0 Biscuits eaten. I forgot the biscuits doh!
5 Moving Robots. Lawn Mower, GPS Boomerang, Dancebot, Line Follower, Scanner (in approx weight order)
$21.80 Room Collection for Science Alive!
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Christchurch Robotics Meeting: Wednesday 20th February 2008
The first meeting of the year attracted over 28 people, another good turn out with lots of new faces and an age range from 6 to, well I was too polite to ask. There were more youngsters in the group than ever before, so it may be worth considering whether we should lay on something especially for the really young ones. We are still fortunate to be able to use the Science Alive facilities and I am pleased to be able to give them a gold coin collection of $33.80. Thanks for your donations, they are appreciated. I have booked the Science Alive Seminar Room for the third Wednesday of every even numbered month for 2008, but do check out our site http://kiwibots.org just in case of any late changes. I had a wonderful time, very educational, thought provoking and many of us found it hard to leave. Thanks to everyone for coming.
Attending Robots and Topics
I (Richard Jones) brought along the propeller proto board that I won at the last meeting. Added to my proto board were interfaces cribbed from the Parallax Demo Board. See their web site for the circuits for TV Video (NTSC/PAL), colour VGA, Stereo Sound, and Microphone. The demos from the Parallax software worked well showing off these interfaces. I also showed an ultrasonic demo that I put together from a copy of the microphone circuit with the 100k resistor changed to 5k6 to make it go _much_ faster for the higher frequencies involved. The sender is driven from two port pins in anti phase, and receiver displayed the sound pulse varying in reception time on a scope style trace on the VGA monitor, the range is about 1m and could easily be extended. I'll post the code in a seperate email. By the next meeting I would like to have the ultrasonics and propeller chip mounted in a robot...
Carl also won a proto board at the December meeting and brought it along showing the VGA and PS2 keyboard interfaces running with a Sudoku game. Very nice, looked very polished and I'm sure lots of hours went into it. Thanks Carl. There are two more proto boards from the December meeting still out in the wild. Maybe we'll get to see them put through their paces next time.
William Wheelan (6) brought along his dad Stuart again. William talked us through how he and his Dad put together the soccer playing robot kits from DSE. He went on to give us a practical demo of the robots playing soccer under remote control. Thanks William for coming along and sharing your passion with us. Do come again if you can persuade your Mum do give you a late pass or persuade your Dad to run an earlier session!
Hanno brought along a plate of cookies and his Dancebot. Hanno gave us a fabulous presentation with insights into the complexities of getting a robot to balance on two wheels involving gyros, accelerometers and fuzzy logic, at the same time tempered with how much fun it will be to dance with when the camera gets going tomorrow. Sounds like it should Jive and ChaCha quite well if you have a belt buckle or 'T' shirt with a special pattern on it. We also got to see Hannos Viewport product in action demonstrating how to make the interfaces, maths and fuzzy logic visible on the Viewport screen while the robot was in action. Very cool.
Eric Cummins bought along another set of walking robot legs and a video of many sets of legs and a vast selection of assorted robots running around in his garage. These looked like serious beasts, a dinosaur, robots from old TV series, some shooting woooden pellets and balls. Some built to perform useful chores like pouring beer, sticking out tongues and shooting. Eric offered to have some of us round to see them close up. I'm keen. Here's the rub, Erics walking bots walk with a many jointed gait and have no processors. Very smart indeed.
All told a very lively and interesting session. If I’ve missed anything or corrections are required just email the group. Thanks to all who came, and especially those who bought items to share like robots, techie demos or food.
Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 16th April 7.30pm in the Science Alive Seminar Room. Keep and eye on http://kiwibots.org for late breaking news. Photos from me and Hanno to follow.
Last Updated ( Thursday, 21 February 2008 )
Prof Chris Rogers Robot Talk Thu 13 Mar
Written by RichardJones
Thursday, 06 March 2008
Thursday - March 13 - 5:00pm - Technology room at Science Alive (education entrance). Duration approx 1 hour.
Chris Rogers is a Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Dept. at Tufts University in Boston. He is the inventor and developer of the RoboLab programming language that is used worldwide to program robots using LEGO Mindstorms.
Chris spent 12 months during 2006-2007 working at a research institute in Switzerland, playing with very small robots and working with some rather novel data acquisition environments.
The talk is for a general audience who are interested in robotics and will include the following: - micron-sized robots swimming, sub-millimeter robots driving through an eyeball, and their award-winning sub-millimeter "soccer player" - a fruit fly to drive a robot around and avoidobstacles - some new innovations being developed at Tufts to increase the use of robotics in the college classroom as a way to teach engineering.
