Chibots

We had another great meeting!

ChiBots Meeting Minutes – Sunday, March 14th, 2010

The meeting was called to order by our President, Salvador G. at 1305.  All of the officers, plus the Program and Competition Chairmen were present .  The meeting proceeded as usual, following our posted agenda for the most part.  Although the weather cooperated, as it did for the CIRC games eight days earlier, our turnout of under 25 was less than that of recent meetings.

1:00 PM Call to order – Club business

Club business:

Index Photo: 

http://www.huv.com/Brainbot-Crawler-04.jpg

- based on a 1/5 scale rock crawler chassis, 30" long
- Novak Fifty-Five crawler motors
- 2.83 GHz Core 2 Quad onboard, running WinXP
- 2 GB RAM, 32 GB Solid State HD
- Prosilica GC650C gigabit ethernet camera
- RoboRealm
- Hokuyo UTM-30LX laser scanner
- 3-axis solid state compass
- GlobalSat BU-353 GPS
- Dynamixel AX-12 servos for steering and pan&tilt camera head
- Sabertooth 2x25 H-Bridge
- 16 Ah 11.1 volt Lithium Polymer Battery

SRS Robo-Magellan

Contest Rules

revised 1-1-07

Object

Robo-Magellan is a robotics competition emphasizing autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance over varied, outdoor terrain. Robots have three opportunities to navigate from a starting point to an ending point and are scored on time required to complete the course with opportunities to lower the score based on contacting intermediate points.

Ever since I read Ken Maxon's article: 'A Real-time Laser Range Finding Vision System', I've wanted to experiment with a similar system. This past Sunday afternoon, I finally got around to it. I don't have any CLPD chops, so I used a regular computer. Above you can see my initial rough results. The line laser registers lower in the image field for the block than for the background. The software properly converted that lower registration to a distance of about 26.5 inches.
 

Index Photo: 

snackBot
Built from scratch using David Cook's excellent Robot Building for Beginner's book.

ChiBots Meeting Minutes – Sunday, February 14^th, 2010

  The meeting was called to order by Salvador Garcia at 1315. All of the officers were present. The meeting proceeded following the agenda previously posted on the ChiBots website. There was an excellent turnout, especially considering that this was also Valentine’s Day, and roboticists are well known for their romantic tendencies. This is the first time that a meeting has fallen on Valentine’s Day since the club started in late 2000. It will not happen again until 2016.

1:00 PM Call to order – Club business

Treasurer’s report
Reminder to pay club dues for 2010
Chibots domain name – report
Bill’s offer for an alternative gathering place for Chibots
Call for presentations
Call for people volunteering for the positions of:

• Presentation Chairman
• Public Relations Chairman
• Membership Chairman
   

Events: