Posts Tagged ‘Robotics’
Results Of The MoonBots Challenge Announced — Houston, We Have A Winner!
After months of competing, the first MoonBots Challenge has come to a close with Team Landroids , a group from Livingston, New Jersey taking first place. The team is made up for five eighth-grade neighborhood friends named Karlin, Stanley, Brian, Gage and Jeffrey. The Landroids were captained by a dad: John Yeh. The winning team’s members are veterans of FIRST Lego League and are no strangers to science and robotic competitions. You can learn more about the Landroids and the protoypes they worked through by watching their documentary or visiting their Web site . While the Landroids’ final run for the points makes the competition look easy (watch their video after the jump), it was anything but simple. All of their plans were nearly dashed as problem after problem popped up for the Landroids. But in the end, all was good and the Landroids emerged victoriuous. Master Lego robot builder and MoonBots judge, Steve Hassenplug , talked about what set Team Landroids apart from the others. “I am very impressed with the results from all the finalists. Clearly all the teams worked hard and had a great deal of fun, but it appeared Landroids approached the competition with a level of professionalism unmatched by any other team, and they truly earned first place. I enjoyed the opportunity to judge the excellent work the teams did. They were all very impressive.” Also recognized were the Shadowed Craters , who captured second place, and Team Moonwalk , which grabbed third. The Shadowed Craters were profiled here a couple weeks ago and are from the Miramar area of San Diego. Team Moonwalk is another New Jersey team (with part of the team hailing from Connecticut). Anousheh Ansari , another MoonBots judge, commented on third place winners, Team Moonwalk: “Two things stood out for me in this team. One was because they used their technical knowledge to outline the scientific benefits of space exploration but also looked into the social benefits of space exploration and the opportunity for different nations to collaborate and create a lasting peace. This was one of my personal experiences on my flight to ISS. This collaborative aspect of space is what most people forget about.” The long road to the finals began with more than 200 applications from around the globe, but mainly located in the United States. These teams were tasked with creating a documentary about their team, creating a prototype using Lego Digital Designer , Google Sketchup or LDraw and create a Web site to share information about their team. From there, the field was narrowed down to 20 teams for Phase Two. (You can review the documentary entries from the top 20 teams who made it into Phase Two here and here .) These Phase Two teams were given Mindstorms kits and a set of objectives to complete within a three minute time period. Based on the team’s performance and some other criteria , a winner was chosen by a panel. Judges for this final phase included Anousheh Ansari, Steve Hassenplug, Dean Kamen and Jeff Kodosky . “Congratulations to all of the MoonBots winners and finalists,” said Jeff Kodosky, Cofounder and NI Business and Technology Fellow at National Instruments . “NI is proud to join with all the other MoonBots sponsors and partners in this incredibly innovative challenge that will help advance science, technology, engineering and math education throughout the world.” Team Landroids will enjoy the grand prize of a trip to Billund, Denmark to visit Lego headquarters, as well as a kit and registration for either FIRST Robotics FRC or FTC. The Shadowed Craters receive a 64GB iPod Touch for each team member and a kit and registration for FIRST competition. Team Moonwalk receives a kit and registration for a FIRST competition too. Thanks to all teams who entered. Every team did a fantastic job, according to William Pomerantz, Senior Director of Space Prizes for the X Prize Foundation . “The work these students did this summer was truly spectacular. The mission very closely paralleled the work our Google Lunar X Prize teams were doing, so we greatly enjoyed watching those technical challenges worked out on a different scale. The new era of lunar exploration is being built on the contribution of people of all ages and nationalities, and it is clear that the MoonBots participants have what it takes to make important contributions.” Read the rest of this entry »
Butler Robot Can Fetch Drinks, Snacks
Meet HERB, a robot from Intel’s research labs that can fetch drinks, get a pack of chips and sort dishes. HERB or the Home Exploring Robotic Butler is a project from Intel’s personal robotics group. The robot sits on a tricked-out Segway base and has arms that are driven by cables to allow it to be extremely dexterous. A spinning laser on the top of the robot help generates 3-D data so robot can identify objects. There’s also a camera to help it “see.” “It (the robot) looks big but it will fit through most doorways,” says Siddhartha Srinivasa, an Intel researcher who is working on the project. “It’s about a foot longer than the human wingspan.” Users can tell HERB what they need using an iPhone interface that the team built. There’s also a voice recognition program in the works so you can just tell the robot loud what you want it to do. The HERB project has been in the works for nearly four years. Intel showed the robot’s latest features at its annual research day fest on Wednesday. HERB is just one of the many robotics project that is trying to teach machines how to do everyday tasks. Willow Garage, a Palo Alto, California based startup has a robot called PR2 that is being trained to sort laundry and fold towels . The idea is to teach robots to go beyond carefully structured and repetitive tasks so they can move beyond factories. Check out the video of HERB at work. HERB doesn’t move fast but if you could just sit on the couch and have it bring a bottle of beer every time, a few seconds delay shouldn’t bother you that much. See Also: Willow Garage Holds a ‘Graduation Party’ for Its Robots Gallery: Battle Bots Reign Triumphant at Robogames Anybots Robot Will Go to the Office for You DIY Robotics: The Rise of Open Source Hardware Towel-Folding Robot Could Fix Laundry Woes Robo-Ethicists Want to Revamp Asimov’s 3 Laws Photo: HERB/ Priya Ganapati Read the rest of this entry »
LEGO Mindstorms NXT Power Programming: Robotics in C
- ISBN13: 9780973864977
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
With fun projects, tips, instructions, illustrations, and programs, this comprehensive companion to the powerful Mindstorms NXT robot kit will help LEGO popularize robotics in the way that the iPod did for digital music. This second edition to programming on the NXT helps users make the most of the latest LEGO Mindstorms NXT release for further robot enhancements. Included is an ingenious set of projects that explore the complete arsenal of basic and advanced NXT functionality. At the heart of these projects is Versa, a versatile mobile robot platform that utilizes modular attachments.
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