The Cowtown Computer Congress

Another contest that I have entered my robot in is called Bipedal Race or Dash. The length of the race is usually 3 meters. The robot who runs it in the fastest time wins. The video below is about as fast as I can get Boomer to run. As the robot goes faster the side to side motion will cause Boomer to fall down.

Video Link

This is one of my favorite videos. It was taken at Robogames 2008. It is a Kung Fu match between two Robots. The guy on the right is David Calkins who runs Robogames. The guy on the left is not as well known but he is in the process of beating David in this rematch from the First Hitec Cup. Where he also beat David’s robot. This is just the first part of the match.

MAKE @ Robogames from make magazine on Vimeo.

I think that this is the end of the match?

Robotic Labyrinth Game on Engadget and Makezine

We knew the Robotic Labyrinth Game was cool, now others are learning about the fun we’re having.

The secret is out Engadget picked up the story and now Makezine, the web site for Make Magazine, is letting everyone know too.

Just when I thought I had the reviews covered another slipped in. The Nintendo Wiifanboy site included a review too. I just had to throw this interesting segment of their article in: “Some geniuses from Kansas City’s “Cowtown Computer Congress“, with the help of an Arduino microcontroller and copious amounts of SCIENCE…“.

WiiFanboy Reviews the Arduino, WiiFit, Robotic Labyrinth Game

Can you spare a Digg? You can help put us over the top here too!

Its exciting to see others writing about our project but you can still get the original story here on CCCKC.

@SomeoneKnows

The next three videos of my robot are of me testing different programmed moves. The first video is of the robot standing up autonomously. The robot has a two axis accelerometer, which senses movement in two directions. The robot uses the value sent to the controller to know whether it is laying down on its front or back. There is an IF statement in the code which has two paths a stand up when on its back or front.

The next video is of me testing a basic walk forward with a side step to the right and left.

The final video is of a test of my PS/2 remote controller. The setup of the PS/2 was not hard to do. I bought the controller at a local electronic’s store.

@mover

This video is of my robot kicking a toy football. This is about as good as he can kick it. If I speed up the leg to much he loses his center of gravity and falls over. I use this move in another contest called demonstration. The goal of that contest is to show off the abilities of your robot in a two minute demonstration routine. The three judges than give you a score between 1 and 10.

@mover