🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <457@modcomp.UUCP> srp@modcomp.UUCP (Steve Pietrowicz) writes:
}I'd like to find out more about "consumer robots".   I recently saw an
}electronics catalog that had three different "robots".  One would move until
}it bumped into something and then would go off in a different direction.
}Another would change direction when you whistle.  The third would follow
}black lines on white pieces of paper.

}... What's the best place to get equipment
}to play around with these things? ...


Here is something that may interest you.  It is a just some stuff that
I collected over the past few months.

Enjoy:

\*----------------------------------------------------------------------*/

The ubiquitous MOVIT series of "Educational Electronic Robot
Kits" is now available from a new vendor:

American Design Components
815 Fairview Avenue
P.O. Box 220
Fairview, New Jersey  07022
(800) 776-3700 / (201) 941-5000 in N.J.

Compared to most of the equipment previously discussed in this
group, these are definite ToyBots. On the other hand, for those
with small budgets and an urge to tinker, these kits may be a
good place to start. Should prove good substitutes for an
automated plant when trying to explain to small children "What
Daddy Really Does". Prices range from $42.95 to $129.95.
Intelligence level ranges from sub-moron to total idiot.

Name           Price Description
----           ----- -----------
Robotic Arm    49.95 Looks fairly lightweight. Grab/release,
                     raise/lower, pivot side-to-side. Hand-
                     held control.
Medusa         42.00 Four-legged plastic dome w. sound
                     sensor.
Mr. Bootsman   49.95 6 insect-like legs, two-speed movement.
                     Hand-held control.
Navius         69.95 Two motor-controlled wheels, guided by
                     marks on a "programming disk"
S-Cargo        59.95 Mororized. Start/stop/turn via sound
                     sensor.
Avoider        59.95 Description says 3 legs (although photo
                     shows 3 per side). Detects obstacles
                     via infra-red sensor, turns, and
                     continues.
Line Tracer    49.95 Follows black line drawn on white
                     paper.
Circular       99.95 Drive and electronics form the "axle"
                     for two large "wheels".  Hand-held
                     control.
WAO           129.95 Progammable (128x4 RAM!) motorized
                     line-drawing robot. Connector port can
                     be used with optional AppleII/IBM
                     PC/Commodore C-64 to "communicate"
                     (presumably download/control).

--------------------------------------------------------
Frank McKenney, President  | {uunet,rti}!talos!mckenney
McKenney Associates	   |   mckenney@talos.pm.com
3464 Northview Place	   |   guest account - access
Richmond, Virginia 23225   |  provided as a courtesy by
USA     (804) 320-4887	   |     Philip Morris USA
--------------------------------------------------------
In article <1990Jul30.004821.27254@talos.pm.com> mckenney@talos.UUCP (Frank McKenney) writes:

>The ubiquitous MOVIT series of "Educational Electronic Robot
>Kits" is now available from a new vendor:
>Compared to most of the equipment previously discussed in this
>group, these are definite ToyBots. On the other hand, for those
>with small budgets and an urge to tinker, these kits may be a
>good place to start.

At Hopkins we are working on "neural" analog VLSI chips.  It occured
to us that these "Toybots" would make cheap, simple platforms for
testing student project chips.  Various senses can be added
("whiskers", "ears" (perhaps using Carver Mead's electronic
ear chip), "eyes" (using focal system on chip surface for things
like the See/Hear Chip)).

Anyway, we have obtained a couple of them, and although we haven't
mounted any of the chips on them yet, they provide an interesting
diversion around the lab :-)

-Thomas Edwards
Ah yes, the MOVIT. Here's a fun project a friend and I did last year:

The MOVIT robot has a powerful (:-) 4 bit controller which we promptly
disconnected from the motors and removed. We then interfaced a 6809
to the motors and wrote a LOGO-like interpreter in Concurrent Euclid.
The robot could perform all of our LOGO commands, with one nifty twist.
We wrote an ON-KEY-DO command which would map key strokes on to 
LOGO procedures. A keyboard monitoring task would watch for these keys
and inform the interpreting task, which would push what it was doing
on to a stack and jump to the requested procedure. 

For instance,

ON 'T' DO TWIST_AND_MOVE

TO SQUARE (SIDE)
	REPEAT 4
		FORWARD SIDE
		RIGHT 90
	END REPEAT
END

TO TWIST_AND_MOVE
	RIGHT 20
	FORWARD 20
	REVERSE 20
	LEFT 20
END


Now if we ran SQUARE 100, and hit 'T' a bunch of times, the interpreter would
nest all of the TWIST_AND_MOVE procedures, causing the robot to do a little
jig. Eventually it would finish everything up and sit where it began.
The system was clever enough to know that if it was interrupted in the
middle of a FORWARD 100, by an ON-KEY-DO, it would finish it up when it
returned.

Anthony T. Green
green@ai.toronto.edu

\*----------------------------------------------------------------------*/
-- 
Marc Fiuczynski
mef@remus.rutgers.edu