Wednesday 27 October 2010

Fun Fun Fun with Robotics

This is yet another part of a new interest I developed. Its Robotics Again. I was building the walking mechanism for the alpha rex on Mindstorms.

It took me a while to build it manually, and the VPL program was larger than most other examples.
It was all worth the effort. Why? There are a lot of reasons for a software engineer to be happy with this.

- First, not a single line of code has been written!! All the instructions are using the VPL that comes with the mindstorms studio. Yes, it does compile and all that stuff but, hey I did not have to type in the code. I was dragging 'logic blocks' to get the job done.

- Second, with this a software engineer can imagine something and he has to imagine not only the logic but, also dream something that is mechanically feasible.

- Third, you have to build it mechanically!!. Finally, something tangible compared to the programs and processes.

The walking mechanism is here in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9h9i2o8YnU

The touch sensors usage is very very impressive so is the technique used to walk. Stuff written on the package is true. 'Only three motors, 2 touch sensors, ultra sonic sensor, color sensor but a lot of possibilities'

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