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RSSC Minutes - Jan 14th, 2006
Attendance: 31
Class:
The 11:00 class was led by Jeff Dunker. A video was shown of Cognex's vision system.
Business:
The business meeting began at 12:30 covering the following topics:
1. Class schedule for the beginning of 2006:
Feb - Batteries/Power Mgmt (Jeff Dunker),
Mar - H-Bridges (Alex Brown),
Apr - Hierarchical goal behavior (Jim Ubersetzig),
May - Soldering: Basics through Surface Mount (Tim Lewis),
TBD - PC/Visual Basic control of a servo.
2. Martin La Rocque will have his son (Rod) check into the requirements for the club to obtain
a non-profit 501c designation.
3. Bill Douglas is instituting a "Robot of the Month" to be shown during the show-and-tell portion
of the meetings. Bill asked how many of the attendees had a robot in the process of being built and
about 25 people raised their hand; so the expectation is for those builders to bring what they have
and share their progress and problems.
The initial "Robot of the Month's" are:
Feb - Shane,
Mar - Jeff Dunker.
4. A reminder that the 4th Saturday of the month is still the share and chat meeting for the club.
5. A reminder to take back any unclaimed giveaway items left in the hallway.
6. Upcoming contests for 2006:
March - Mini Sumo (Jeff Smith)
May - Hall Navigation (Alex Brown)
TBD - Follow On to Line Following (to be developed at the Feb meeting)
The business meeting concluded at 12:55
Contest: Line Following
The Line Following contest had 6 robots enter.
While Jeff Dunker's and Gary Smith's robots both successfully completed the course and recognized
the end of the line, the rules that the judges were given didn't mention the bonus points for stopping
at the end, and Jeff Smith's and Jim Ubersetzig's robots finished the course with more speed and took
the wins. During practice John Davis's robot was the fastest but had trouble with the triple turn
section of the course. After the contest John shortened the wheelbase of the robot and it performed
flawlessly. George Mitsuoka brought a Scribbler robot, but it's sensors seemed to have trouble from
the fluorescent lighting. All in all 5 of the robots were very competitive and will make for an
interesting follow up competition to be planned in February.
Rules and pictures of the individual robots are posted in
the contest section.
Show and Tell:
1. George Mitsuoka shared his pictures from RoboNexes and the Consumer Electronics show. Several companies
were seen to have robot "erector sets" coming to the market, as well as a more advanced Aibo and walking
robots from Hitec and others. (10min)
2. Robin Hewitt showed her face recognition software she is developing for the LEAF project. She noted that
current software too often depends on planned poses that is unrealistic in the LEAF projects environment,
and shared her approach that was able with a web-cam to pick out a face against a busy background. (35min)
3. Tim Lewis demo'd an animatronic monkey head called "Alive - the Chimp". It had a remote control that
could either directly control the movements or initiate a behavior sequence. The chimp successfully
demonstrated it's fright sequence when Tim told his he plans on dissecting it soon! (5min)
4. Steve Vorres showed a range finder he found at Lowes (Straight Line $22) that was able to sense 60+
feet down the hallway accurately without interference from walls, floor or ceiling. Many of us are very
interested in the upcoming hack report; this looks very promising as a home robot sensor. (5min)
5. Alex Brown brought in a shoulder mount to an R2-D2 arm and is working with an R2-D2 builders group that is
planning to use the LEAF project inside. He discussed his use of a servo controller to convert the shoulder
motor into a servo; due to problems with it's one way serial control and it's small amp rating (oops!) Alex
discussed possible directions for a customized USB multi-channel high amp controller. Hope that Alex finds
success by the time the "PC/Visual Basic control of a Servo class" takes place. (15min)
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