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Organizations / United States / SMART / David Schilling / meetings / | |
| SMART - Seattle Mindstorms and Robotic Techies
To join our Google groups mailing list, send an email to David Schilling (see any recent post, and remove the spambot from the email address). Current Mini-Challenge April 26th, 2014 For now, bring any robot you’re working on. An official mini-challenge may be announced at a later date. Grand Challenge Indy Racing Build a robot that can race around a gradient track. The track is approximately 2 feet wide, and goes from completely black on the left side to completely white on the right side. Have your robot try to stay at the same level of gray-scale the entire time. We’ll start with a simple oval track, but perhaps we’ll add a “T” later on. Since this will be hard to test without access to a track, you can try printing a couple of pages of a gradient on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper, and tape them together. But also, try to write your program in such a way that you can control the various aspects of how your robot drives. Perhaps have parameters that you can set which specify the maximum speed of your robot, how sensitive it should be, how much it should slow down in corners, and so on. 
Cubes on a Grid The Grand Challenge for 2006-7 is to build a robot that gathers cubes on a large checkered grid. The cubes will be standard 4x4x4 LEGO cubes. Robots compete against each other to find the cubes and return them to their home base. For the following meeting: We’ll probably vote for something like one of these mini-challenges: Inverted Pendulum Cat Herding Wagon Push If you think of new mini-challenge ideas, either post them in our group, or bring them to the meeting, and I’ll add them to our list. Future challenges: Compact List Full List January 25th and February 22nd, 2014 Cube Bot Build a robot that does something with cubes. You can use any cube you like, but a standard LEGO cube made out of bricks can be seen in this illustration: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Samples/4x4x4cube.gif November 16th, 2013 Candy Bot Build a robot that somehow uses candy. It can give it, sell it, throw it, or even use it as a power source if you can figure out how to do that. Use your imagination. October 26th, 2013 BrickHeap Wars Challenge was announced at meeting. June 29th, 2013 Space Elevator Robots Build a robot that can climb a “Caution Tape” ribbon. (The one I’ll be bringing to the meeting is under $20 from Home Depot: 500’ Heavy Duty Reinforced Caution Tape”, Empire manufacturer, SKU 719-282, usually in the tool aisle.) For the mini-challenge, any ribbon climbing robot will be acceptable. The motivation for this mini-challenge, though is as practice for the Space Elevator Competition, two of which are coming up. Rules for the competition can be found at http://www.isec.org/sec/index.php/family-science-fest. April 27th and May 18th, 2013 3-way Sumo This month’s mini-challenge is to build a sumo robot. The distinguishing feature this time is it will be 3-way sumo. That is, there will be three robots on the ring at the same time. Our build rules (since it’s a competition, and not entirely free build) is that robots must weigh under 3 pounds, and may not be larger than 12”x12” at any time. They must be built entirely out of LEGO using standard building techniques, and you may not intentionally damage an opponent. The arena will have a white surface with a narrow black rim. I think Mark said his arena is a 4’ wide octagon. That’s it. Have fun! Previous Meeting - March 30th, 2013 Sorting Robot The mini-challenge is to build a robot that sorts something. You decide the type of object and the criteria. I had a fun discussion with someone that sorting by smell might be a fun one to try. Can’t find a clean t-shirt? Send your laundry pile through the robot to have it pick the least smelly one :-) If you want more serious suggestions, sorting by colour or size are two obvious criteria that should be relatively easy to do with a Mindstorms kit and sensors. You can sort LEGO pieces, pencils, pop cans, or any other item you want (including, if you want, smelly t-shirts). Previous Meeting - February 23rd, 2013 Facilities Robot The mini-challenge is to build a “Facilities Robot”. This is a very open ended challenge; the idea is to build a robot that you would see in some large institution. It can be anything. A mail delivery robot, a floor cleaning robot, a robot that runs the elevators, a robot that opens doors, a robot that serves meals, or makes beds (if it was a hospital, for instance), a robot that takes out the trash, whatever you can think of. Have some fun with this one. Previous Meeting - January 26th, 2013 Build On The Spot We will build robots on the spot. Bring your LEGO, your laptop, and lots of energy to the meeting. We’ll announce the challenge promptly at 2pm. Having a driving base, and perhaps some line tracking code ready would perhaps (but not definitely) be useful. Previous Meeting - October 27th, 2012 Target Acquisition Robot Build a robot that can acquire a target. You could either have the robot shoot at the target, or catch it. Make sure your robot is safe -- no dangerous projectiles, don’t shoot too fast, or too high (ceiling!) We don’t want to injure anyone, or damage the facilities! To make it interesting, build your robot so that someone else can place the target, and your robot will still be able to find it. And for bonus points, have a moving target! Previous Meeting - September 29th, 2012 Dancing Robots The mini-challenge is to build a dancing robot. It must be able to do four actions: turn left 90-degrees turn right 90-degrees move forward six inches and do some special action The first three commands should be as accurate as possible, and need to be done in 3 seconds or less, and the special action needs to take 10 seconds total, and it needs to be back in the starting position when done. Think of the special action as a little jig that it does. It can spin, twist, wiggle, whatever you want as long as there is some movement involved. For testing purposes, write four separate little programs using NXT-G to do each of the actions. At the meeting we’ll create a combined program that will link the robot actions together so that all the robots can all dance together. Previous Meeting - June 30th, 2012 Mechanical Computer, or Imitate an Animal At the SMART meeting the vote was tied for our next mini-challenge between building a robot that will imitate an animal (self explanatory), and building a mechanical computer in honor of Alan Turing’s 100th birthday this month. If you’d like to build the mechanical computer, take whatever level of challenge you like. Build a simple working logic gate, such as a NAND, OR, XOR, or any of the others. Or build a working Turing Machine. For a real challenge, hard code it to be a Universal Turing Machine with a program on the ‘tape’ that computes the first one and a half digit of Pi (in the three hours we have at our meeting, anyway!) The mechanical computer idea will definitely take more than an hour or two’s work, so I recommend you don’t leave it for Saturday morning before the meeting. At least start doing a bit of research & planning before then! Previous Meeting - March 31st, 2012 Easter Egg Hunt The mini-challenge we decided on was Easter Egg Hunt. Build a robot that can find and dump the little foil-wrapped chocolate Easter eggs from Hershey. Here are what they look like, with some bricks for size in the second & third pictures: Hershey’s bag chocolate eggs sizing egg The arena will be a white bottom, 4’x8’ rectangle, with 2” high walls. Robots should somehow pick up the eggs (taking care not to unwrap them), and drop them over the wall, preferably at the corners. Here’s a picture of a previous time we did this. Previous Meeting - February 25th, 2012 Line Tracking Race Build a robot that can track a line as fast as possible. The line will have maximum 45-degree turns, and will be an inch wide. It may cross itself, in which case the intersection will be at 90-degrees. Here’s a sample arena picture. Previous Meeting - January 28th, 2012 Rope Crossing - The Sequel Build a robot that can cross the gap between two tables with a rope stretched tautly between them. For bonus points, start away from the rope, and/or end away from the rope. We’re trying this again, because it was pretty difficult, and everyone at the meeting had new ideas they wanted to try. Previous Meeting - December 10th, 2011 Rope Crossing Build a robot that can cross the gap between two tables with a rope stretched tautly between them. For bonus points, start away from the rope, and/or end away from the rope. Previous Meeting - October 29th, 2011 Pumpkin Chuckin! Build a robot that can toss a “pumpkin” as far as you can using ONLY LEGO! Your “pumpkin” can be any LEGO element or elements, as long as they won’t damage anything when they land! As an alternative challenge, you can build a robot that will throw something at a target. Make sure you place your target BEFORE your robot shoot! Previous Meeting - June 18th, July 23rd, and August 27th, 2011 DUPLO Ball Elevator Build a robot (or mechanical device) that can quickly and *reliably* lift DUPLO balls. Previous Meeting - May 21st, 2011 Creatures Build a robotic creature. Something organic, or something that moves or behaves organically. Previous Meeting - April 30th, 2011 Chimney Climber Build a robot that can climb a chimney, or between a pair of parallel walls. For an extra challenge, consider making a “Santa Claus” robot that start at the top with a payload, goes down the chimney, drops off the payload, and then climbs back up. For an even more challenging robot, drop the payload off “under the tree”, and after climbing up the chimney, climb right out of it! Previous Meeting - March 26th, 2011 Plotting or Drawing Robot Build a robot that can do some form of drawing, coloring, or plotting. You pick the surface, and the method of drawing. Previous Meeting - February 26th, 2011 Tracking something different Build a robot that tracks something besides a line or edge of a line. Use your imagination for this one. If you need a hint, you might consider wall tracking. But seriously, try to be imaginative with the sensors you have available. Previous Meeting - January 29th, 2011 Build On The Spot A very low-key version of BrickHeap Wars -- bring your LEGO, and we’ll announce a challenge at the meeting for you to build and program a robot to do. Previous Meeting - November 20th, 2010 Teeter Totter Build a robot that can find the balance point on a teeter totter. You can make it as easy or hard as you like. Here are a few sample teeter totters: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/David/SMART/Samples/Arenas/teeter_totters.png Previous Meeting - September 25th, 2010 BrickCon Display Robots Build one or more robots to display at BrickCon. Anything you think would make a great display robot is welcome. Some ideas: o Build an instantly recognizable, or famous robot. It needs to move, and preferably be able to edge-track. R2-D2, Wall.e, Number 5, Robby the Robot, or any one of the probably thousands of other robots that people will recognize. We’ll put them either on lines to track, or on the gradient race-track from two BrickCon’s ago. o Build a “hands-on” toy that uses the NXT. People love Gus’ ball-shooting robot, Nick’s white-board drawing robot, and other arcade-style robots. Build something that will draw a crowd of people wanting to try it out! o Build a robot that will empty the balls from a crate and dump them 20” above the ground. These can then be used with Mark’s colour-sorting ball contraption. |
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