Staticfree Blog

This robotic vehicle is totally awesome. It has 4 carefully-controlled wheels per side which can rotate more than 90° as well as move forward and backward, raise and lower. It can drive normally, sideways, spin in place, walk(!), and other keen things. If only there was enough monetary interest to build a full-scale model of it. Now that I'd pay to see.

The robot competition went well. After many-an-hour of last-minute tweaking, building and designing, we got our robot mostly working. I was able to get manual-override going nicely, so I could drive the robot around with a USB joystick. The automatic mode doesn't entirely function correctly - it seems to be a bit confused as to how to actually drive the robot. With some luck and testing, we should be able to fix that soon, though. There're some photos online for your photonic, pictoral pleasure.

It's that time again: robot crunch time. We worked on our robot until 1:00 last night and ended the night by getting the treads on and aligned. We strapped on (using electrical tape, of course) some 30Amp 12v batteries, a high-current relay and a "Emergency Off" switch on on a long cord and started driving it around outside. We took photos and videos. The thing's a beast and is definitely prepared to crush all hu-mans.

Today, Andrew and I need to make the robot's brain's go. It's got all its brunt, but without brains, it's just a killer robot that makes a ton of noise. With brains, it's a smart killer robot that makes a ton of noise. Smart noise. We've gotten USB part #1 going - the GPS. Next up is the motor controller controller. We need to make one PWM generator for each motor controller that we use, then write some simple code to interact with them. Once we get the USB chip's programming done we're essentially home-free.

On a more chocolaty note, I've forgotten how much I love hot, malted chocolate. Thankfully, I've a rather full container of it on my shelf in Geekhaüs's cupboard. Ah, I miss Geekhaüs - I went to bed before ¾ of its inhabitants at a wholesome 04:00. Now if only Rochester had a job or two lined up for me, it'd be perfect. Well, almost perfect: I still need to get a car so I can visit some friendly .ma.us friends (especially those at remote .edu's).

The code is almost complete! Well, by complete I mean mimimally functional. Which is useful as the competition is a day or two away and we've not yet tested the bot as a whole. Let's hope the unit testing works out as well as it is supposed to. Andrew, Zac and I pulled an all-nighter in the labs, tossed the code into CVS (finally!) and just coded as much as we could.

Hm. I've been up since 10:00 wednesday. I should sleep.

Coding + trance + coke == happy steve