Get your SUMO bot together and bring it to the ASM each Saturday for our weekly challenge! There are lots of sumo kits out there if you don’t have the resources to design your own, but they ALL need improvement. This is a great venue to discover the strengths and weaknesses of your configuration in a fun environment!

Compete and compare your robot each week to hone your machine into a winning configuration in time for the robotgames in May!!

Your robot will join the league of competitors on our “Leader Board” at the society!

Craig’s donating prizes for the winning robot
(Posted by Craig Maynard )

For those interested in the theory that goes into the practice, here is an article discussing the limits on [flying] maneuverability in cluttered envrionments. Inspired by abilities of birds, but ‘simple’ enough to soon be available for use in UAVs.

Fundamental Law of High Speed Flying Maneuverability Discovered

We are now taking registrations for the 2012 Western Canadian Robot Games!

The Games are being held this year on May 12, 2012.

Visit http://www.robotgames.com/2012-robot-games/ to register for this year’s robot games.

Good luck to all competitors!

This is last years information, but I ran accros a reference, and do not remember seeing anything about it here. 40 minute video. Would be fun to have one of those PR2 robots to play with!

Google I/O 2011: Cloud Robotics

The talk mentioned being able to use ROS with Arduino, so I looking up this information:

ARM and ROS

Not enough to be able to build a complete bot running ROS on an Arduino, but enough to make it easy to use Arduino as part of a bigger system using ROS. A much more complete implementation will run on Andriod [in Java].

We are sorry about the wait; things have been really busy for us here in Calgary!

And now here’s what you’ve all been waiting for – the rules for the new Off-Roadbot Challenge!

This is a new addition to our annual event, and we invite everyone to take part. Taking place in the field beside the museum, competitors will have their robots navigate an outdoor obstacle course from one end of the field to the other.

Take note that your robot will have to be rugged enough to survive potentially wet and bumpy terrain, as well as navigate through tall grass without losing it’s bearings. This challenge is meant for autonomous ground-based robots that are either mechanically or battery powered.

For more details on the rules, course & prizes, download the PDF below!

This 16:47 video includes many clips of quadracopters that have been posted here before, being talked about by a researcher from University of Pennsylvania researcher.  The final ‘music video’ clip, I have not seen before.

Vijay Kumar: Robots that fly … and cooperate

Thanks to Gina for pointing this Ted Talk out to me.

–
Phil

Now here is a different remote control robot.  A simple sphere that can be controlled by bluetooth.  Video with link to article.

Now if these had any sort of external sensing [seems to have just internal gyroscope and accelerometer], how about a flock [fleet?] of them to be used as remote sensors for other bots?  eyes and fingers.  At $129 each though, that would get pricey fast.

The Technomagic of Sphero

These are being taught by one of the Standford professors that taught the machine learning course that I posted last fall, plus a prof from U of Virginia.

CS 101: BUILDING A SEARCH ENGINE
CS 373: PROGRAMMING A ROBOTIC CAR

See Udacity or directly to CS 101 and CS 373

The robotic car course adds to the previous course, but the previous courses is not a requirement.  CS 373 assumes strong programming knowledge, but CS 101 does not need any previous programming background.

Announced but not shipping yet, Ladyada has designed an Arduino-compatible wearable electronic platform.

Here is the sign-up page, for those that want to know immediately when they are actually in stock.

That sign-up page also has a fair about of information about the capabilities and intended usage.

Hey guys.

Took some footage from the deck of my brutusbot to share with everyone.   Lots of work to still add, but so far 5K code out of 32K space!  Lots of room left!

We’d love to see your creations! Upload a video and send the link to info AT robotgames.com and we’ll check it out!