Robotics

Last updated: July 11, 2001
Robots are great fun to build and play with. I have built several. Unfortunatly, when the Red River decided to come visiting in April, 1997, it destroyed all my robots and my lab/workshop, so picutres of the early robots are not forthcoming B(.



Robot experimentation need not be expensive (although it is nearly always time-consuming). I've probably spent more time working on control code for virtual robots than actual hardware ones. Robot simulators abound on the net. One of the first ones I played with is Crobots, which is a battle robot simulator. Each contestant writes a robot control program in C, and up to four at a time are loaded into the simulator and run. Each virtual robot has a drive mechanism, scanner, and a cannon. The object is to destroy the other robots. After a friend and I wrote a few programs for the game, we talked the local ACM chapter into holding a contest. The tournament attracted quite a few good programmers. The source code of the various robo-competitors is availiable here.

Robotics links:

Robot information (lots of links!)
Robotics mini-FAQ
Portland Area Robotics Society (kits, etc).
NASA's Cool Robot of the Week site is a great place to start.
The Robotics FAQ is a good place to find robot building info.
The Robot contest and compeition FAQ
A very cool site for real battle-robots is Robotwars
RobotBattle homepage
Robot Sumo is also an interesting idea (and simple/cheap too!)
Portland Area Robotics Society has good info and kits on it's page.
MIT's 6.270 contest/class has some excellent info and a handbook online.
For those who like soccer, the RoboCup website is worth a visit.
A more research-oriented page is the Computer Vision homepage.

This page written and maintained by John Nordlie (nordlie at rwic dot und dot edu)
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