None of my bots fared well at the competition. The pool racer I had spent so much time on decided to wander off into the sunset. I think the sonar may have been confused by another entry with the same sonar sensor. A lot of work down the drain for nothing.
The Spring competition I didn't even bother to attend, as none of my bots were in working order, and parts I had ordered had not arrived yet, so nothing was ready in time. Pox and pestilence! I'm losing interest in these competitions anyway.
Back to work on HAL! My evil robot army needs a leader, and HAL is going to be it! Next step is the encoders and compass. Once that is in place I should be able to navigate around the lab without crashing into things. I need to rework the bumpers a little as well.
Back to the lab!
Friday, June 8, 2007
Monday, November 13, 2006
Life is full of disappointments
I was looking forward to my evil robot army overthrowing the Bush Empire, but it looks as though the Democrats have beat me to it. They are off to a good start. We'll see if they are able to field any decent candidates in 2008. This gives me time to build more robots...
Work has begun on yet another bot, this one a mini-sumo for the Competition in December. It's a bit crude, and I'm not completely happy with it, but time is running out and I don't have enough time to do a complete redesign. Perhaps it will do well enough. I'm also going to change the gearing (and the programming) of Boe-leg, my line follower bot. See if it's fast enough this time to win something.
Work on Hal is crawlling at a snails pace, partly because I've spent so much time on other bots. I spent most of my build time on the "pool race" robot, and it may be that mine is the only entry (!) unless someone shows up at the last minute and trumps me. We'll see.
Hal's head is kind of wonky, the next version will have to be much more robust. Too much slop in the gearing, the head movements are jerky, as is the mouth movement. The next one will be much better! I've learned from this one, if nothing else. I may be able to kluge together the Leaf code and the Ultrahal chatbot with a scripting/macro recorder program. It seems doable at first glance. I may ultimately write the Hal code in lisp, and have it access the Alice AIML code available on the net.
Work has begun on yet another bot, this one a mini-sumo for the Competition in December. It's a bit crude, and I'm not completely happy with it, but time is running out and I don't have enough time to do a complete redesign. Perhaps it will do well enough. I'm also going to change the gearing (and the programming) of Boe-leg, my line follower bot. See if it's fast enough this time to win something.
Work on Hal is crawlling at a snails pace, partly because I've spent so much time on other bots. I spent most of my build time on the "pool race" robot, and it may be that mine is the only entry (!) unless someone shows up at the last minute and trumps me. We'll see.
Hal's head is kind of wonky, the next version will have to be much more robust. Too much slop in the gearing, the head movements are jerky, as is the mouth movement. The next one will be much better! I've learned from this one, if nothing else. I may be able to kluge together the Leaf code and the Ultrahal chatbot with a scripting/macro recorder program. It seems doable at first glance. I may ultimately write the Hal code in lisp, and have it access the Alice AIML code available on the net.
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