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.""

Comments

I wish

[Eightyford]

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.

Re:I wish

[phaggood]

> wish I had this as a kid

Don't get me started on what I wish they had when *I* was a kid - cheap computers (the Atari 800 w/ magnetic storage was nearly $2000!!) cheap-assed web cams, cheap movie editing software (buddy and I were going to make our own stop-action "Aliens" with action figures - developing the b/w 8mm film was going to be about $200) high speed internet, big-assed hard drives (paid over $1000 for a 5MB HD in my 20's) cheap blank CDs and DVDs, cheap or free web development tools, free programming IDE's (The Atari ST came w/ NO programming tools; the C++ compiler was over $200!)

God, the kids these days don't have ANY idea what kinds of production powerhouses they have sitting on their desks - and they waste it bootlegging songs and IM'ing each other (so whut u doin? nothin. what u doin? nothin. go ne nu music?)

All that free time..... *sigh*

Kit robotics

[Kell Bengal]

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.

XBC Robot Starter Kit

[Anonymous Coward]

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 :-)

Mindstorm software....

[Nichole_knc]

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....