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| Robotics |
Introduction
Robots, like most of my other interests, have always fascinated me. I remember a toy robot that I think was passed down to me from my older cousins. This toy robot is my earliest memory of a robot. I also used to watch reruns of Lost in Space and then in 1977 I saw Star Wars. Well, I loved R2-D2 and from that moment on I wanted to learn more about robots. In my education I decided to take the computer science route which was all about software. So this made it difficult to find anyone doing robotics that wasn't into electrical or electronic engineering. I tried to find a course at my university but there wasn't one. There was a small college near by that offered one but they required to you to be enrolled in their 2 year degree program. I wasn't going to give up a 4 year degree for that, especially considering I already held a 2 year degree in computers from another college. So, I decided I would teach myself robotics. I purchased a few kits over the years and built some interesting little devices. Then, I got married and well, the robots stopped for a while.
The kids
Once my nieces and nephews began got a little older I thought I'd introduce them to robotics. I drug out some of my old kits but they were not very impressed. Then I told them about the LEGO Mindstorms robots. They were interested in LEGOs so I discovered that at one time there was a project called Red Rover that was designed to introduce kids to robotics and the solar system by having them design and build miniature Mars rovers using the Mindstorms RCX 1.0 & 1.5 kits and connecting them through some custom education software such that the rovers could be controlled remotely. This sounded like a great project. So, I pulled out my original RCX 1.0 and set out to resurrect them while the kids designed their rover. Unfortunately I was not able to get the RCX working properly with the modern operating systems on today's computers. So, back to the drawing board.
Arduino
In my quest to advance my own knowledge on robotics I discovered the Arduino board. This is a small open hardware platform for use as a micro controller. Many people use it to prototype all sorts of electronic devices including robots. It is cheap and reliable. So, I thought, why not "upgrade" to the Arduino and use it for the Red Rover? By this time my second niece was getting interested in robots through a summer learning series she attended at her local library. I then set off to design a simple robot that we could use to learn how to use the Arduino and all the necessary components. The design, I think turned out very nice, but I still needed to incorporate the motors, sensors, and servos. About this time I found the BoE Arduino Shield Robot Kit. I thought, ok this makes sense. No sense in making all the components from scratch just to learn about the Arduino. We could use this kit for that and once we figure everything out we'd move on to either my design or attaching the Arduino to the Mindstorms.
BoE
I purchased the BoE and it arrived about a week later. Imagine my surprise when the package showed up just a little bigger than a business envelope? Yes, I was VERY disappointed in the size of the kit. However, it did have everything I needed to build a bot. Since the kit is so easy to assemble and then unassemble I decided to build it first by myself and then over the holidays let my niece re-build it. This way, I was sure I knew how to work everything before trying to teach her. Wish me luck.
Created on 08/15/2013 11:31 AM by admin
Updated on 08/15/2013 12:07 PM by admin
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