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Lego Mindstorms AT-AT
cybercuzco writes: "Lego has just released a new mindstorms add-on that lets you 'create a fully operational Imperial AT-AT walker.' Pictures and specs are available here. The price is rumored to be $99, so start saving your nickels."
If you've got deep pockets, get the Mindstorms base kit and add 'Vision Command' ('http://guide.lugnet.com/set/9731') to it. Vision Command comes with a small USB video camera which can be programmed to watch for movement in various 'zones' of its field of vision; what it sees is sent to your computer via USB, and then your computer can send that information back to the Mindstorms RCX unit via infrared. The result is that you can make a robot which turns its head to watch you as you walk in front of it (as in, make it turn its head to the right if it sees motion to the right of center), or which can orient its gaze on anything it sees of a specific color. Very cool!
If you're interested in LEGO at all, check out the Lego Users Group Network at 'http://www.lugnet.com/'. They have discussion groups for everything from robotics to train sets, they link to set instructions and CAD programs and information on programming the Mindstorms RCX in Java. Also, there have been two books published (one by O'Reilly) about building robotics with Mindstorms.
The blurb commented on the "steep" price - $99 US. Well, I recently decided to buy a Mindstorms set for my 12 year old brother, to see if I got him interested in programming. (He is already an avid Legoer, and has a lot of engineering potential...) On the Lego web site, I found one which looked good - only $60 too. Problem is, I'm in Brazil, and they don't seem to ship overseas. So I go shopping, and I find out that they don't sell this set here for less than R$280, which is about 150 dollars!
After some research, I found out that these kits are also ridiculously overpriced in many other countries outside of Western Europe-US-Japan. This is really too bad; there is a big market of hacker-larvae around the world who would kill to get one of these, if only they could afford it. By limiting their market like this, Lego are causing a situation where no one wins.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
The Imperial R&D Department, in the basement of the Death Star...
Clinko Palpatine, age 12, the Emperor's nephew and head of development, is working on the control software for the new AT-AT model...
> IF legs == blocked, THEN stop walking
A few days later - the AT-AT, sent into battle, falls into a trap...
TYPE MISMATCH: legs is of type LIMB, blocked is of type BOOLEAN
FATAL ERROR: stop walking is not a known function
TOO MANY ERRORS
SEGMENTATION FAULT
DISACTIVATING UNIT
With programmers like clinko running the thing, it's no wonder the Empire lost!
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Oh come on, it's not as if the rest of the Star Wars universe had been scrupulously checked for engineering consistency and then the AT-AT ruined it.
It's the feel that's important with George Lucas films, and Empire was among the best.
Can you imagine the Star Wars series with strictly plausible plot devices? :
R2-D2 plugs into a power socket instead of a data port. When his circuit breakers are reset they have to completely reinstall him from cd and get the data from backups, which takes all day.
Han Solo gets frozen in carbonite. When they defrost him he's only good for feeding to Jabba's pig-like guards.
R2-D2 heads off into the desert to find Obi-Wan Kenobi. Luke easily finds him 20 ft. away bumping up against a rather tricky step and feebly wiggling his little front leg trying to climb.
Luke finds Obi-Wan, the last Jedi in the universe who survived the slaughter of his entire order. Unfortunately he threw away both his and Anakin's lightsaber many years ago to avoid being identified and now smokes a bit too much wombat resin and only answers to the name "Bob".
etc etc
see?
A fully operational AT-AT walker? does that mean I can shove about 30 stormtroopers in it and take over a military base with it? Fully operational and for only 99 dollars? I am gonna buy 20 of them and take over microsoft by force!
The anti-salmon
I want one of these just so i can wrap up its legs in dental floss and laugh when it falls over.
I'm no super programmer or anything, but you would think the programmer of the walkers in the movie would add something like:
"IF legs == blocked, THEN stop walking"
That's of course if they were real.