Wednesday, February 27, 2008

NASA Robotics competition for kids



Two Southern California schools -- Glendale's Roosevelt Middle School & Reseda's Shirley Avenue Elementary School -- captured top honors at a Lego robotics competition sponsored by JPL on Tuesday, Feb. 26.


The winning schools were two of 12 schools that participated in the second annual Southern California NASA Explorer Schools Robotics Competition, held at JPL's von Karman auditorium. JPL is the local NASA partner for 25 schools in Southern California.


The school teams spent months creating small, software-enabled Lego robots for this contest, which encourages students to study math, science, technology & engineering. Students could not use remote controls & had to pre-program their robots to navigate an obstacle course & perform tasks such as retrieving simulated planetary mineral formations -- all within two minutes.


The winning teams:


Elementary Division


First Place: Pirate Tigers


Shirley Avenue Elementary School, Reseda


Second Place: No Fear


North Ridge Magnet School, Moreno Valley


Third Place: Nightmares


Lakeview Elementary School, Huntington Beach


Middel/High School Division


First Place: Robotic Roughriders


Roosevelt Middle School, Glendale


Second Place: Tinkerbots


Kranz Intermediate School, El Monte


Third Place: Terrabytes II


Village Academy High School, Pomona


Other Awards


Robot Design: Las Bellas team


Joyner Elementary School, Los Angeles


Ingenuity: Robotic Roughriders team


Roosevelt Middle School, Glendale


Good Neighbor: Nightmares & Spikers teams


Lake View Elementary School, Huntington Beach


Against All Odds: Robotic Tigers team


Johnson Magnet School, San Diego


Against All Odds: Cybernetic Minds


Jack Weaver School, Murietta


Phoenix: Scorpions & Pirate Tigers teams


Shirley Avenue Elementary School, Reseda


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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

M01 Mech Robot (Ultra cool)




M01 Mech Robot































































Target Environment of robotLocomotion Method
Indoors2 Legs
Sensors / Input DevicesActuators / Output Devices
joystickwindshield wiper motors (2)
Control Method Power Source
Operated by passengerBattery
CPU TypeOperating System
N/AN/A
Programming LanuageWeight
  N/AN/A
Time to build the robotCost to build the robot
  3 months$1000
Robot`s URL for more information
  http://basicrobotics.net/mech.html

Comments
About 3 months ago there was an article on hacked gadgets about a mech that I built. Unfortunately that mech didn`t work very well and before I knew it there were pictures all over the internet, so I decide to rebuild it and this what I came out with, the M01. I wanted to build a robot that is able to carry a person and be as low cost as possible. It consists of 100 feet of metal, 300 nuts and bolts, 2 windshield motors, 10 door hinges, one joystick and a boat seat all this cost me $1000 that includes the microcontroller and the pneumatics system from the first version that I didn?t end up using. Also it has 2 12V batteries that can run for like 4 hours, before you have to recharge them again. Of course it still needs some work on it to make it walk a lot faster, but I'm still working on it


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