SMART Meeting #1
January 29th, 2001
Here are some video clips of the robots demonstrated at our first meeting. Appologies in advance that I didn’t get video of all of them, and that the ones I did get turned out so dark.
Our first mini-challenge was to build a robot that would follow the boundary between a black and white region. Many of the movies are of the robots attendees built to do that. The rest are of robots that people brought just to show.
I can’t remember the names of everyone, so if you know who created some of the robots depicted here, please let me know, and I will give proper credit for their creations. Thanks.
Note the sizes of the movies. They are big! You may want to wait until you have a high bandwidth connection before trying to download these! However, I can’t guarantee that the movies will stay there forever, as I’m not providing the storage for these.
Click on the pictures to view movies
| | Walking Spider
13,375,566 bytes
An eight legged walking Znap/Mindstorms creation. It can walk, turn corners, and will eventually (through homebrew sensors) be able to avoid falling off the table!
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| | Dumbwaiter
3,547,958 bytes
A model of a continuous dumbwaiter.
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| | Puck Gatherer
1,925,956 bytes
Gus Jansson’s winning puck gathering robot. This robot won the Workshop 3D puck gathering event in November of 2000.
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| | Gus Jansson’s Line Tracker #1
6,976,170 bytes
Gus Jansson also won the line tracking event at the Workshop 3D competition, with a slightly modified form of this robot. Eight feet in 6 seconds! That’s amazing!
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| | Gus Jansson’s Line Tracker #2
12,922,036 bytes
This steering version of a line tracker was built by Gus just for this meeting’s mini-challenge.
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| | Gus Jansson’s Line Tracker #2
1,315,468 bytes
But it’s not perfect. On another track, however, Gus’ line tracker cut some corners.
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| | Race Car
2,373,024 bytes
Mark Meadow built a RCX controlled race car.
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| | Mini M&M Dispenser
5,856,456 bytes
This is a wonderful Rube-Goldberg-like candy dispenser that someone built. I kept thinking that the candies would for sure end up on the floor!
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| | David Schilling’s Line Tracker
9,144,520 bytes
This line tracker was built and programmed by David Schilling in an hour. It uses a turn table for steering, and was programmed using LEGO’s RCX code.
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| | Ray Freeman’s Line Tracker
3,557,718 bytes
This original idea for a line tracker, built by Ray Freeman, the originator of the Workshop 3D robot competition, needs to be seen to be appreciated. It “walks” along the boundary, one side moving while the other stays stationary, then alternating.
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| | Oscillating Light Sensor - Line Tracker
7,008,492 bytes
This particular line tracking robot had a single light sensor on rails at the front of the robot, oscillating back and forth to find the boundary.
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| | Close up of Oscillating Light Sensor
14,201,366 bytes
Here’s a close up of the way the light sensor moved on the robot. (SMART attendees were discussing the Workshop 3D challenges.)
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| | Scout Line Tracker
4,999,812 bytes
This edge tracker used the Scout instead of an RCX. The Scout has a built in light sensor. There’s a McDonald’s restaurant set providing counterbalance because the Scout must be mounted vertically!
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| | Race between Line Trackers
5,030,870 bytes
Gus Jansson’s two line trackers compete against each other to see who will go faster.
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| | One Line Tracker Passes another!
16,837,584 bytes
Here Gus’ steering line tracker actually passes the other line tracker!
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Maxwell’s Demons
Several attendees at the first SMART meeting had a competition the night before. The basic idea was to build robots to push white blocks onto their own side of the playing field, and push black blocks onto their opponent’s side. The playing field was too big to bring to the SMART meeting, but here are a couple of video clips showing what the competition was like.
| | Demonstration of Steve’s robot
10,434,740 bytes
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| | Camille vs. Steve, Trial Round
5,011,000 bytes
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| | Camille vs. Steve, Round 1
30,310,622 bytes
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| | Camille vs. Steve, Round 2
30,764,538 bytes
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| | Camille vs. Steve, Round 3
14,419,540 bytes
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| | Camille vs. Steve, Round 4
9,438,086 bytes
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| | Camille vs. David
30,439,370 bytes
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| | David vs. Steve, Round 1
7,005,700 bytes
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| | David vs. Steve, Round 2
31,036,428 bytes
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