Sunday, January 1, 2012

Design Decisions

Hobby Robots

by johnwonch | on December 20, 2011 | No Comments

Many time when you see a “robot kit”, you see a little toy like thing that your ten year old would play with. But there are other robot kits out there, like Lego mindstorms. Admittedly, it has a nice processor and a lot of people have written software to maximize what the mindstorms can but it looks like you breathe on it hard and it would fall apart.

I would like to build something better, keeping in mind that you won’t build any of the robots in the movies like R2D2, or Johnny 5. But I would like to build something that looks like it would stay together.

Doing a little research I’ve come across a couple of manufacturers that build impressive kits like at www.robotshop.com or the ATVs at MINDS-i.

Theses are nicer to play with or experiment with but they also costs more. It is my guess that the robots and/or kits that cost under $100 are more popular with the kids.

I would think that most robot experiments are of high school age and up. I have seen several articles on the web about experiments done in programming classes at vary universities. I have seen doctrinal thesis (papers done for degrees) done with mindstorms! That one really surprised me!

But this sort of experimenting has had a lot of popularity on YouTube as well. These can range from silly to some that are impressive. I have seen a few on Mindstorm robots that did a nice job of walking upstairs.
Hobby robots

can be exciting as well as a good learning experience

But in this kind of projects you need to program as well. The Mindstorm kit comes with a drag and drop method of programming which is neat but a little hard to understand. On some of the forums, the experiments have complained that the programming system that comes with the Mindstorms kit is too limitings and point to a programming system called Lejos that uses the java programming language at //lejos.sourceforge.net/. If you like C or C++ take a look at nxtOSEK.

But this hobby (like most hobbies) get expensive quick, so you need to look around at the various kits and see what fits your needs. I know that when I look at all of the kits, I tend to go WOW! until I get to the price tag. The price tag depends on what level of an experimenter you are. The inexpensive kits will give a beginner a good start and then he can decide which direction to take next. Sometimes a local computer club can offer guides and alot of them are online with forums where you can ask questions.

Availability of parts, programming aids, and software can also affect your choices. I think for the money, the mindstorms kit is a good value but look around to see what you like. There are enough resources to keep you busy just looking at the variety.

But in the end you need to make a choice and buy a kit and work with it for awhile.
If money becomes too much of an issue, maybe you should at a business that will give you some freedom and pay for the extra toys. Some of the people who have done this have been able to leave their jobs behind.