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Renton Technical College, Room H102.
President: Ron Nucci r.nucci@worldnet.att.net
VP/treasurer: Ron Provine ronprovine@telesphere.com
Secretary: Tom Dickens thomas.p.dickens@boeing.com
Attendance is about 60 plus, with over 10 new people.
Acroname is having a robot contest in mid March, 2001. http://www.acroname.com/robotics/info/expo2001.html
AAAI contest in Seattle in August 2001. http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/conferences.html The 2001 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference August 4-10, 2001 in Seattle, Washington. Information about the conference is located at the IJCAI site. http://www.boeing.com/nosearch/ijcai/
The SRS will provide more information on this when we find out more. There should be some build-a-robot contests similar to the MIT 6.270 events. Ron Provine is involved with keeping up to date on this.
Also, the 2001 RoboCup soccer contest will be in Seattle in conjunction with the AAAI/IJCAI conference: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~robocup2001/
Next year will be a good one for Seattle-based robot events!
Ron N.: Brought in a new modified RAD robot, using a RAD base and a blue square bucket for the body. In the body he has a stack of circuit boards, with sensors and a speaker up on top. His goal is to have a simple prototyping platform for a robot that will follow a human around.
In demo mode, the robot was (slowly and intermittently) able to recognize voice commands. In one mode it will try to find a human, and will approach to about a foot away. Very nice work in progress.
Book was recommended: "Robot Shaping" by Dorigo and Colombetti. Hardcover - 203 pages (November 6, 1997) MIT Press; ISBN: 0262041642
Ron P.: Robothon 1999 T-shirts for only $10, pick them up today. Robothon 2001 T-shirts will be available in a couple of months.
FIRST teams are active through the SRS. There is also a FIRST Lego league for 9 to 14 year olds. This kicks off in April, 2001. $350 for a team to get started. http://www.usfirst.org
Jeff Bronk: Passed out rules for a prototype contest to be help at Robothon 2001. This will be run during the floor exercise during Robothon. The contest is the "Kitchen Run", which is to go from a carpeted area, through some obstacle, to a vinyl floor area, find the "fridge", retrieve a can of pop (beer?), and return to the starting place. Jeff demoed his idea, which generated good discussion and ideas.
Frank: Brought in a small Mechano robot. A work in progress which hopefully will be running for the next meeting.
Karl: Brought in "Danno", his security robot with processor, electronic compass, RF modem, etc. He is looking for a good speech output board; if you know of one, let Karl know. The base is build from sintra, a foam-based material which is very strong and very lightweight. http://www.seanet.com/~karllunt/
Doug: Robothon: Saturday April 28th 2001, 10:00 am to 5:00pm. Hack session the night before, 6:00 to 10:00pm. http://seattlerobotics.org/Robothon2001/index.html
Budget is looking good, we have gotten good vendor and sponsor support, including cash for cash prizes for the contests. We have been getting lots of Linux support. We are also looking into getting a professional video of robothon done. Sponsors we have so far are:
- Linux Journal http://www2.linuxjournal.com/
- Seattle Center http://www.seattlecenter.com/
- Lineo http://www.lineo.com/
- Gecko Systems http://www.geckosystems.com/
- Alaska Airlines http://www.alaskaair.com/
- AcroName http://www.acroname.com
- Lynxmotion http://www.lynxmotion.com/
- Newton Labs http://www.newtonlabs.com/
Steve: Brought in a nice tracked tank toy from the Toys-R-Us discount table, only $10. Circuit Cellar magazine, articles on robot vision. http://www.circellar.com/
Lego RCX challenge was a week or two ago. Great event! http://www.workshop3d.com/rcx/
Encoder Articles: Good selection in the past few months! Steve is doing a series of articles interviewing SRS robot builders. Great job Steve! http://seattlerobotics.org/encoder/index.html
Vetco has moved to the Fred Meyers building, about half a mile or so east of their old location.
Gary: Poll about the upcoming firefighting contest. A few SRS people are serious about entering. Also, questions about "expert" mode.
Lego Extreme book, a good addition to the previous book. Paperback - 250 pages 1 edition (October 2000) APress; ISBN: 1893115844
Ted: Battery outlet store (Batteries Plus) in Olympia WA. Good selection and a great catalog. see http://batteriesplus.com Has continued working on his very small stepper-motor based robot, and is working on the driver circuitry. Has found a driver, Toshiba TD62783AFN, TD6784AFN, 8ch High-Voltage high source-current driver.
Doug: Brought in a Toys-R-Us silver 8-legged walking robot ($20) which has a child-sized wrist controller. Of course, Doug had it taken apart to see how it works, to when he ran it the legs fell off. Just 2 motors in it and the legs are cam-controlled in a wave walking motion. Very cool! Check out the BEAM web-site (on egroups). They have this robot detailed, along with other interesting robots. Also check out http://wowee.com
Radio Shack voice record and playback chip ($17). They have a pre-build version which is cheap ($8), works well, but has a reduced capability from the $17 chip. He has worked with the system and the messages are addressable in 125mS segments. He is working to be able to access different messages in whatever order he wants.
Mark: Has the 68332 boards in, see him after the meeting.
Larry: FIRST competition. See Larry for information after the meeting. http://www.usfirst.org
Printer brought in, free to a good home. Check it out after the meeting. Also, some free books and catalogs, and some computer boards for give-away.
Great meeting and maze contest. See you at GodFathers...