George Taylor shows Propeller-based TABLEBot "Jiffy". As
an effective demonstration of "Phase I" Jiffy went forward to
the opposite end of the table and simply reversed to return
to the original side.
Probably one of the cutest TABLEBots
around "Just-in-time" is being teased by Mike
Thompson. Note on-board camera. Still
running same code from last year; "Phase II"
successful still... No apparent code rot.
Nathan Monson looking at his balancing robot "Snappy" as
it gets up from lying on it's back. Snappy sports an ARM
processor as well as Mini-ITX and stereo webcams.
Seems everyone's going vertical. Here Chris
Palmer shows how much the ZenBot has grown. I
remember when he was just one layer... the
Zenbot that is...
Dave Curtis debuts "Alfred" his classic turtle logo project
work-in-progress. Dave runs the KidSIG with the help of his
daughter Shiloh.
Dr. Alan Federman hacks a Wowee Quadruped for
voice-control. Microsoft Vista problems
notwithstanding he did manage to verbally order
the robot to get up and raise and lower it's head as
if to say "yes". Note the 2.4Ghz camera on top.
Alan says he wants to do some remote-presence
experiments with Skype.
Steve Okay shows his two Roomba-based robots "Rivet"
and "Rover". Rivet navigates cluttered environments and
can or soon will be able to discern soft from hard objects
so to pick up cloths. Rover was a commercial project for
Steve to build a robot for the recent Comic-Con. He points
out that the choice of a regular easel as the structure was
fortuitous in that different cameras can be attached.
Andrew and Alex Sy present "Pinky". Although
radio-controlled they demonstrated IR drop-sensors
that would stop on the table's edge autonomously.
They also showed a neat little homebrewed WiFi
card.
Our fearless leader Wayne Gramlich shows "Alice" a
RoboBricks2-based robot. It uses a hacked Linksys router
on which he gave a presentation last year. This allows
Wayne to run Linux with wireless communications.
Bob Allen shows "EggHead" and "Isis". Egghead
was an early prototype of the new AMPBot which
which will be available in the fall from Hasbro.
Congratulations to Bob and Ted Larson.
Thanks to Anthony and Tony Pratkanis for setting up
the Trinity fire-house. Here Tony's "Solnopsis Invicta"
(fire-ant) goes for another candle emergency. Tony
and his robot have won the RoboGame's "Gold" four
years in a row!
Here Rose Mills retrieves "Iye". After a manual
adjustment it did manage to blow out the candle. This
is not a contest... it is a challenge.
Michael Cipriano starts "Styne" which took Silver at
RoboGames this year... giving Tony a little competition.
And finally Brandon Blodget entertains us with his
sponge-welding "Mappy"... very animated!