Slashdot Mirror
Water Basketball Robot
tisaak writes "Second-year Mechanical Engineering students of the ETH Zurich are required to participate in the so-called "Innovation Project". A subject is assigned each year and 12 teams battle it out to develop a complete product. This year's subject was "Sport and rehabilitation" and "Cleaning". One of the teams managed to build a floating, ball-throwing kind of robot. I think the whole idea is funny and the fact that it has a lot of cables and a processor in it should appeal to the Slashdot public :-) The electronics platform used is called C-Control and is used to control the sensors, the motor and the LCD-Display. The implementation of the game program is nice, considering it is written in a subset of BASIC."
Wow, and I thought I was bored.
collins, brian
http://www.floyd.ethz.ch/img/swimtest/spiel4_small .png
That image looks like some kind of ritual, is it some kind of new robot religion? It seems like there is not much time left until the robots will rule.
It's starting to seem common to build a robot. On the other hadn, they used BASIC. How could anyone chose the glorious language of basic over something more confusing, and cluttered as C++, or possibly java?
I don't know why, but I read the headline as White Basketball Robot, and all I thought was, "That's silly... everyone knows White Robots Can't Jump."
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Innovation projects sound like a pretty good idea. Too many science courses, including comp-sci, are excessively theory-oriented. Innovation is the lifeblood of science, not the ability to recite a text-book.
Every course should have something along these lines.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
considering it is written in a subset of BASIC
This is the language Bill Gates invented before he wrote Windows.
With a processor and a bunch of cables and /. would love it, as long as it ran Linux.
If it ran Windows, they would just love to make fun of it.
It sure got me wet.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Use a variation of the old banana throwing game to get the robot to throw the ball? Man I wish I could remember the name of that game right now. Couldn't get enough of it when I first got my computer ages ago.
what is a subset of BASIC ? "BAS" or "SIC" ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
And I, for one, welcome our new robotic masters.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
the fact that it has a lot of cables and a processor in it should appeal to the Slashdot public
What do you think we are, nerds or something?
The coolest voice ever.
If you were looking for the lowest power microcontroller board available, this would be in the running. I guess it was inexpensive -- always a plus for student projects. (My first computer in 1979 could probably thrash this good, except in size.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Al Gore invented that too!
the machines will attack us when we won't allow their basketball team in our olympics. Neo (Wooden Plank, not Reeves) will be our only hope!
Fuck Dvorak.
Does this mean we will be able to watch hot female androids playing basketball, instead of really tall sweaty men, in the future? Woohoo! I'm there!
Just goes to show what people can do when they are not busy killing each other and fighting over who owns what.
>One of the teams managed to build a floating, ball-throwing kind of robot...it should appeal to the Slashdot public :-)
/. crowd, I get this image of a floating robot that can hurl a pumpkin a mile.
From previous stories that have appealed to the
They choose basic because that is probably the only language that processor can be programmed in.
You don't program such chips with high-level languages like C & C++. Typically you only use assembly language or other machine-level codes.
The basic-like language (not really a subset, btw) was just provided as a convenience to the programmers.
-D
RobotWars between robots that can hurl a pumpkin a mile. Who cares if they float?
All registers bolo.
Theory is the ability to recite a textbook? this is "insightful?"
One of the teams managed to build a floating, ball-throwing kind of robot
I imagine they only use floating point calculations
Table-ized A.I.
Not even close.. he helped(?) write a version for the Altair.. but by no means invented it..
Not a bad feat back then, but still, dont over do the credit..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I wonder how well it dribbles? And how good is its dunk shot?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Actually,
;-p
I looked at the pics and was deceived by the lack of cables: my very standard PC has more if you open it, and if I consider some of the network cable racks we have down in the computer basement, then the robot definitely doesn't shine in the cable dept...
That said, it's weird, it's quirky, it's useless and that nearly makes it funny
yours ever, fz.
Don't you mean Water Polo?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Anyone else, after reading the title, hear Ben Kingsly's voice in the back of their head: "I love water basketball." I always thought it was one of the funniest lines in the movie.
Floating robot....that's pretty cool. Maybe you answered this in your statement but how are the cables etc. able to get wet without something happening?