Slashdot Mirror

Rules: http://www.botlanta.org/mini-sumo

You can get kits for $100 or less, focus on the programming issues of controlling mechatronics, and reading sensors. Contests happen all over the place, and the robot is a decent starter platform for other contests, like line following.

Here's a recent thread on the Usenet newsgroup comp.robotics.misc - the poster asks about how to do a high school club, but (especially with other posts here about how smart kids are) many responses should apply to your situation:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.robotics.misc/browse_thread/thread/775ceae020f351a6#

I hadn't heard of the TI calculator interface before, and I've been to the monthly Atlanta meeting for years. Lately we've been wowed by one member's 3PI line follower (video on the site below).

And while the following isn't what you asked, it will make a good complement, and you're bound to find others there from your area with school-related activities similar to yours who can help. There may already be a general hobby robot club in your city that welcomes "children of all ages." Google for these:

robot clob
hobby robot

with the name of the nearest major city.

There's certainly a club in Atlanta:
http://botlanta.org/

Be sure to check out the Links page, at the bottom are links to other robot clubs in the USA (there may be other clubs not listed).

Let's see, 1x is 1.2MB/sec peak, that's 20833 times the write rate, and 1x is about 580 RPM (for a CD anyway, I would assume it's the same for a DVD, but you how how dangerous that is.) Anyway, if they are the same that's about 12083140 RPM. Most discs weigh about 15 grams and have a diameter of 12cm. According to http://www.botlanta.org/converters/dale-calc/flywheel.html that's about 0.05 joules of energy (a joule is a newton-meter) whereas as 20833 times the speed, that's 21620375.64 joules. Just to put that in perspective, it's over six kilowatt-hours. Even with six lasers (and thus at 1/6 speed) it's still a kilowatt-hour's worth of energy... Given that the fastest hard disks operate at about 30 or 40MB/sec peak, I think we have a ways to go :)

Reading TFA, you'd think ONLY the Lego competition was going on, but that's about 1/3 of it.

Quoting from TFCNNA:

"Joining some 25,000 high school students who compete separately, hundreds of budding mad scientists from ages 9 to 14 each hope their mechanical monsters will win an award."

The Lego League is obviously for ages 9 to 14, and the other two competitions (described below) are for the older high school students 'who compete separately.' Thus, the CNN article is all about the hundreds of younger kids, and only a bare mention of the thousands of older kids who make up to two-thirds of the competition (not to take anything away from the LEGO league).

Putting on my imaginary Reporter cap, the first thing I'll do is shamelessly steal text from the usfirst.org website:

"FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a multinational non-profit organization, that aspires to transform culture, making science, math, engineering, and technology as cool for kids as sports are today.

FIRST was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter"

There are/were THREE things going on at this event:
The original FIRST Robotics http://www.usfirst.org/
These are given standard controllers and motors (much like R/C radios with high-power servos), and the kids have to find and make the frame, wheels, arms and other mechanical parts 'from scratch'.

FIRST LEGO League http://www.usfirst.org/jrobtcs/flego.htm
This is based on the Lego Mindstorms robotics kit(s)

Those two competitions have been going on for several years.
And this year for the first time:

FIRST Vex Robotics http://www.usfirst.org/Vex/

Vex Robotics is a kit sold at Radio Shack for $299 It's very much a complete kit with controllers, motors, wheels, frame pieces, nuts and bolts. Of course anyone can buy it but one of the requirements for the Vex teams is that they ONLY use parts from the Vex kit. IIRC, there were four Vex teams, and each team got two Vex kits to make their robot with.

Of course, the greatest shame is that I didn't go and have no excuses for not going. But at least I attend the local Robot Club meetings (and a shame there's no mention of this event on the website, especially since it's the FIRST HIT when googling for robot club):

(shameless plug)
http://botlanta.org/

I can't clain to have built the bot either, but I can vouch for author. If there are errors you could get help directly from the author or from any number of robot club mailing lists.

Chibots
AHRC
DPRG

And more. The clubs often have links to one another, check around for one in your area and you could possibly get in person help if you have a problem.

The nice thing about Robot Sumo is that there is a fair number of local competions closely patterned after the original .jp Robot Sumo and one of the robot classes is autonomous.