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Do-It-Yourself Robotics
PreacherTom writes "Imagine Legos and Erector Sets on crack.
The fruit of a collaboration between Lego and the MIT Media Lab, the Toronto-based startup Playful Invention Company is offering the PicoCricket, "a kit of parts that can be used to build an infinite variety of robotic inventions. The kit contains an assortment of pom poms, pipe cleaners, and other craft materials reminiscent of a summer camp art period. It also includes a collection of Lego bricks and electronics: the Cricket "brain" and a motor, colored lights and a soundbox, a digital display, and an infrared beamer that allows the Cricket to communicate with a PC on which kids write the programs that control their invention's behavior. Perhaps the most important parts in the Cricket kit are the four sensors, which detect light, sound, touch, and electrical resistance.
"It was lots of fun making things and controlling their action," says Grover Venkatasubramaniam (age 10). "The most fun was programming the robots. It felt like giving life to lifeless bodies.""
The kit contains an assortment of pom poms, pipe cleaners, and other craft materials reminiscent of a summer camp art period.
This one time at summer camp, I built a cheerleader robot.
God spoke to me.
Is it possible to build a do it yourself self-help-therapist robot?
I wish I had this when I was a kid. Robotics is what got me interested in programming in the first place and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It's one thing to see "hello world" on a computer screen, but programming a "light seeking" or other simple robot can really get the imagination going.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Could have sworn it said "porn porns" instead of "pom poms" in the OP. I was like "Where do I sign up?!"
. . .raman-i-am.
I just call him "Noodle" for short.
KFG
They're not used to polysyllabic surnames - the place is filled with Smiths and Joneses.
Instead of The kit contains an assortment of pom poms, pipe cleaners, and other craft materials reminiscent of a summer camp art period, I read The kit contains an assortment of porn porns, "pipe cleaners", and other craft materials reminiscent of a summer camp orgy period.
I am sorry.
If you really want to do some programming of a robot, then Mindstorms is a lot better than this dopey toy. Mindstorms is easy to get going with, yet has significant depth and you can keep learning..... Hit the wall of the Mindstorms UI and you can add Lejos or similar and go to a whole new level of complexity.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
"The most fun was programming the robots. It felt like giving life to lifeless bodies.""
Maybe he could get that job with Stephen Hawking...
we'll be able to clean up the internet and its tubes !
Flash-heavy site though.
I just don't know... I still don't think these are the droids I'm looking for.
I've always been skeptical of kit robotics. I'm a robotics post-grad student so perhaps I'm spoiled by some of the gear I get to play with, but I've always found that robot kits seem kinda wimpy and limited. I'm so tired of seeing line followers and edge follower robots. Lego mindstorms was a step in the right direction - giving you a platform that can be used to make some truly interesting applications, but I still bemoan the underpowered motors they provide. One day I'd like to make and sell a robot kit with simple optical vision (say 32x32 pixels), some serious motors (50 W or so) and a linux based embedded system, with an RC radio jack and all of the interfacing worked out and a nice development environment. That would be a kit worth having and it would have rocked as a kid.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
The most fun was programming the robots. It felt like giving life to lifeless bodies.
Thus spoke J.F. Sebastian. At least Blade Runner remains under budget and ahead of schedule.
Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime... -- Machiavelli
So far, the Radio Shack/FIRST VEX robotics kits seem to be the most interesting pre-fab robotics kits next to the older Lego MindStorms kits. There are numerous sites that carry add-on parts (sensors, timing gears, etc...) for the VEX kits, as well as the long awaited programming module.
Of course, if you'd rather go the old-school route, you could go looking for Capsela sets and try hacking together a few custom bubble modules to give it some intelligence.
8==8 Bones 8==8
The best lego kit for the money is the XBC Robot Starter Kit. Its a little rough around the edges, and the documentation could be *way* better, but the XBC is wicked :-)
...not "Legos"!
I wonder if I can convince my wife that my 3 year old son needs this $250 toy to stay ahead of the curve... :-D
Erector Sets on crack ...I can see the spam now,... yes...
-m10
Dad, "Yes but when we bought you the robot kit we didn't expect you to program it to kill your sister. Besides that cat got in the way last time it attacked her."
Johnny, "Aw Dad, the vet said his fur'll grow back."
What good is a robot without an artificial mind?
DIY AI is now out on the Web and freely available for Do-It-Yourselfers (DIY) and robot enthusiasts to adapt to their favorite pride-and-joy robots.
The Singularity Is Near!
True AI has arrived.
There's real progress in kit robotics, but you have to be willing to pay roughly the price of a PS3 for it. See Lynxmotion and Hitec Robotics.
Among other things, you can finally get stock R/C type servos with a digital interface providing position and torque feedback. That's a huge step up - you're no longer stuck with blind position control; you can do force control and software-implemented compliance, like Brooks' insects from a decade ago. The actuator hardware is now available.
Sensing is improving, but a 6DOF INS is still rare on kit robots. That's purely a volume problem; accelerometer and gyro chips are cheap, but the systems haven't come down enough yet. We're starting to see rate gyros in kit robots; adding a rate gyro to an R/C biped makes the thing much more stable.
The software used to drive hobbyist robots tends to be way behind the state of the art, but that will get fixed as more people read the papers and write code. The next few years are going to be interesting.
IMHO the VEX system is NOT a robotics kit. It is controlled via radio control, not by a programmed CPU or microcontroller. BIG difference
I was going to post the same thing. Glad I checked first.
Turns out only old North Koreans need p0rn poms. Remember, in Soviet Russia, p0rn poms YOU!
I need a Walking Eye. I've got some walking eye stuff that needs to get done and currently nothing to do it. I was thinking about bulding a 1/6th scale walking eye and working my way up, so smaller actuators would be fine for this revision. A few hundred bucks would be a small price to pay for my very own walking eye! I just need to find a good supplier for the iris mounted lasers and the camera. Of course, the walking eye features a stealth design, making it perfect for reconnisance type operations!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
(offtopic)
There was a thread a while ago where you mentioned traditional violin playing making use of microtones. I love traditional fiddle music (I play guitar, and have had a few violin lessons). Can you please recommend some recordings? You made mention of traditional Scottish and Briton music..
I'm a member of emusic, and have found these recordings:
The Beaton Family of Mabou: Cape Breton Fiddle and Piano Music (http://www.emusic.com/album/10864/10864323.html)
Various Artists: Smithsonian Folkways: The Heart of Cape Breton (http://www.emusic.com/album/10864/10864412.html)
do you know these?
Any suggestions appreciated!
Thanks..
I read "pom poms" as "porn porns". That'll makes for a serious double take when you hit "pipe cleaners".
http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=2882 3 and http://www.mini-box.com/VIA-NL-10000E-Nano-ITX-Mot herboard and http://gcc.gnu.org/.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Actually, it isn't. Indic words can be broken down into conjunct-consonant groups that roughly correspond to a single syllable. The kid's name, therefore, is more correctly broken down as veM-ka-t'a-s'u-bra-ma-nyam; I really haven't anyone break such a name down to 'asub', which, if you know Sanskrit, would mean 'inauspicious' (and thus defeat the purpose of having two Gods names in yours)
Might add here that the kid's real name is probably Siddharth (and not whatever they typed in the article)and that, quite possibly, he's carrying the surnames of both his parents; 'Grover' is probably his mom's surname, while Venkatasubramaniam is probably his Dad's name (and hence, he's bound to carry it as his surname according to Tamilian tradition). 'Venkatasubramaniam', as I was hinting earlier, is a conjunct word mixing the names 'Venkata' and 'Subramanyam', thus denoting a certain acceptance, and fusion, of the once competing twin traditions in Hindu theology, Shaivism and Vaishnavism. If the kid's dad was Irish, it's almost as if he was born into both Protestant and Catholic families and was named to reflect that.
In short, the kid's name carries a lot more cultural meaning than you guys can ever imagine'; he apparently bridges not only quasi-religious divisions in south India, but also the ethnic divisions between India's North and its South.
Don't let any of this stop you folks from cracking tasteless jokes on words you hardly understand though; not once is it irritating, exasperating, and plainly unfunny.
More than mere navel gazing.
Interesting but hasn't this been done before. I forget what the kits were called, but it was basically the same thing - maybe a bit less rugged. Please join our new tech discussion forum at www.NewToTech.com our community is very small right now, help us grow
...because if I did, I'd never have noticed girls! Robots are just that damn cool!
When I saw the words "Lego" and "Erector", I just thought of the lego vibrator :)
Uh...I've had two Lego RCXs sitting in my closet for...about 6 years now. What's so new about this thing?
http://mindstorms.lego.com/ it's been around for a while. Hell, my highschool has about 10 of 'em, and has been using them for 5 or 6 years at least.
"The kit contains an assortment of pom poms, pipe cleaners, and other craft materials reminiscent of a summer camp "
Porn porns? What!? Ohh... POM POMs. Damn this Bitstream Vera font.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
The pom poms are so that my death robot can cheer as it kills you.
I once worked for a company that was using the mindstorm software to run a real live production bot stamping sheetmetal parts for cars... It never worked right.. lol What do you expect for "toy" software and a windows machine that skips a clock cycle on sync motors... I quit that job... Jack-legg ppl....
This kit has nothing over Vex robotics unfortunately. I find it rather sad that a group of MIT kids came up with this one. It says nothing positive for the MIT crowd. If you need to make a cute looking robot, you should buy the decor you need at a craft shop instead of being given an inadequate robotics kit with some flowery design elements you can add to it.
I thought the same thing; if it's "Legos and Erector Sets on crack", then do they lay around the house all day in a state of induced ehphoria (until they need their next "fix", at which time they rampage around looking for it)? Personally, I'd rather my Legos and Erector Sets look unnaturally "pumped" and be a little too "agressive" for most people's taste (though I can do without them having that "forehead bulge" and I'll pass on the liver damage...) *sigh* I guess everything has its tradeoffs...
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Actually they're (not singular "it's") "LEGO bricks", not "LEGOs" or "LEGO." That doesn't keep me from calling them LEGOs, though. It's just that if your going to be a pedantic asshole, you might as well be a correct pedantic asshole.
How does a 7-person democracy cut a pie? Into 4 pieces.
like these? What's it for? if you want to build your own terminator or something?
FGD 135
Er, Cydonian... parent was making a reference to Stephen Colbert's joke about problems pronouncing the name of Iran's president. It's forgivable that you missed the joke, even one so prevalant in popular culture, but to chuck a huge fit in the way you did is both pitiful and hilarious.
bricklink
Do-It-Yourself Robotics? Isn't the whole idea behind robots to have them do things for us?
What's next? The backtalking robot? The unionized robot?
Infrared beamer? Don't they realize that has already been pretty well tested with LEGO Mindstorms 1.0-2.5 and it really stinks? Tell your robot to turn around away from the transmitter, whoops! no more signal!
I much prefer using the Bluetooth of LEGO Mindstorms NXT. That's basically the most important element of the system which makes my web-controllable wireless robot ( http://turbogfx.homelinux.org/legocam ) possible.
Which, by the way, after I spent $91 on 4 500mAh rechargeable 9V's + charger for the wireless camera, is now back online and ready for you pesky slashdotters.
for using the plural "Legos" of Lego.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
it seems you have an obsession with gayness. this isn't the place to talk about that though, you might wanna go talk to a psychiatrist or a dance instructor about it.