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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 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?
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.