From: hal@finney.org
Date: Tue Jun 26 2001 - 12:52:10 MDT
I've had a long-time hobby interest in robots. I built a Heathkit "Hero
Jr" robot back in the 80s and programmed it to chase my kids around the
house. It had a very primitive light sensor and a sonar distance detector
so it could roughly tell when someone was moving around in front of it.
It also had a voice synthesizer so it could make menacing noises when
it would chase them. Great fun.
I've also built some little mechanical robots from kits I found on
clearance for $5 once. These usually cost more like $50-100 so I wish
I'd bought more. There was a simple line-following robot and one which
had an IR transmitter/receiver to detect and avoid objects.
But I think the best kit for hobby robotics now is the Lego Mindstorms
set. This runs about $100 for the base unit but I picked up some of
the expansion sets on clearance at Circuit City last week for $13 each.
It's got motors and sensors, and you can program it with an easy graphic
programming language that includes counters, if-then branches, etc.
The familiar Lego blocks make it easy to put together all kinds of
different shapes.
Plus if you want to get more advanced you can get development tools to
program it in C-like and assembly languages. There's an O'Reilly book
on the subject plus lots of online resources at mindstorms.com.
I don't recommend the Droid Developer Kit from Mindstorms, it is too
primitive and just has some canned programs to move in fixed patterns.
It's more for younger kids. Get the Robotics Invention System which is
the real set.
Hal
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