I took a couple of hours today to photograph and document two old minisumo projects: Screech and Velox. You can see the photos here and here.

Screech was my very first minisumo and I attempted to make one without starting with a kit. It was moderately successful (good enough to win first place in Traditional Minisumo at Robothon 2003) but quickly lost any competitive edge against more advanced robots. Today it sits on a shelf and will eventually be recycled into a new robot.

The picture to the left is Velox as it is today. This isn’t what Velox looked like originally. I had purchased a Mark III kit and built it pretty much as-is except for using a different controller.

Velox continues to be a pretty good robot though. Recently it placed third in Advanced Minisumo at the WCRG. Over the last few years I’ve made many modifications to try to be more competitive. I didn’t keep a good photographic record, unfortunately, and I don’t even recall all the changes that were made. I do recall that at one time I had mounted 4 AA batteries above the controller board though. It had a total of 8 AA batteries and was pretty powerful at the time (circa 2003).

Hope you enjoy the pictures.

I wasn’t able to get to Portland for this year’s PDXBot event as we had previous plans to be up to the Okanagan region that same weekend. But my friend Dave Hylands offered to take a couple of my robots with him and run them for me. So I packed up The Thin Man and AL the microsumo, gave Dave a few instructions and advice about behaviors and such.

I was very happy with the results: The Thin Man placed first in the Advanced Minisumo category. Dave’s cool minisumo Stinger placed second, and Daryl Sandberg’s Slik placed third. AL placed third in the Microsumo category. You can see the full results here and here.

Dave was gracious enough to provide some video footage from the event. I picked out two of the battles between two of Dave’s robots and The Thin Man for your viewing pleasure (each is 2.7 MB).

The Thin Man vs. Maurader

The Thin Man vs. Stinger

Both videos are a lot of fun to watch and highlight that winning is sometimes just a bit of luck. In both videos it is very clear that The Thin Man is good at tossing an opponent out of the ring but detecting the opponent is a bit of hit-or-miss. I really think both matches could have easily turned out quite differently. But I’m not one to complain at this point.

My father-in-law is very generous. Recently he bought me Almost Human by Lee Gutkind, a book of stories about a variety of robotics research. Most stories center around the CMU Robotics Institutes’s various projects pushing the envelope of autonomous robot behavior, although the most interesting story is about Manuela Veloso’s vision for RoboCup.

Another interesting topic is about the CMU Zoë project, a research project in the Chilean desert for an autonomous platform capable of conducting a search for biological elements without human intervention. The navigation and science packages may someday be included in a rover destined for Mars. In fact the author spends the majority of pages on this project, likely because it has sensational appeal, and because the author traveled to the location to watch one of the several exercises.

The book also touches on some of the people involved in these projects. The human element really comes through, and its nice to hear the researches are willing, and able, to bond emotionally with the machines they create. In my opinion the true test of robotics intelligence will be when a robot is able to establish a similar emotional bond with people.

I’d recommend this book although it’s definitely not a technical resource like The Principals of Robot Motion, but still it can be inspiring for people who make robots. I really like the idea that robotics research is progressing by leaps and bounds in my lifetime. I’m looking forward to seeing autonomous robotic researchers crawling the surface of the Moon and Mars as well as the first robot-human soccer game. I wonder who will win such a match?

The Western Canadian Robotics Society held their annual event this past weekend, and I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to attend again. This year the event was held at the Aero Space Museum out near the Calgary airport.

Once again, it was a great event! I captured a number of photos and short video clips (not always the best quality, sorry) here. I haven’t had a chance to clean them up or even give them proper titles and descriptions yet, but maybe you’ll enjoy them anyways.

In addition to the minisumo events there were the classic events of line following and mine sweeper. There was also a nice First Lego League demonstration. Since I was flying and had to bring my robots on the plane, I only took my two minisumos: Velox and The Thin Man. As you could imagine, I had to put them in my suitcase, there was no way I would be allowed on the flight with something that is basically a sharp chunk of metal.

There were eight minisumos competing in the “advanced” class this year. It took six rounds to declare The Thin Man the first place winner, while Velox took third place. Craig Limber’s Sayonar Sucker had an excellent day and earned second place. It helped that Dave Hylands wasn’t attending this year, he is going to PDXBot.07 this coming weekend instead.

It was a lot of fun again this year and you can be certain I’ll plan to go again next year.

I’m not someone who plays video games very often, I own two or three games and have lost interest in all of them. I’ve never owned a GameCube, XBox or Playstation. I never really caught the game fever.

Then comes the Nintendo Wii. I’ve seen the advertising. I’ve heard about it from other people. But never played one until a work event a few weeks ago. It took exactly one game of the Wii Play cow racing to hook me like an addict.

I came home and revealed my new weakness to Eileen. Even my verbal description was enough to get her interested in the idea too.

Of course wanting a Wii isn’t quite the same thing as owning a Wii. They are still in short supply and finding a store with some in stock is rather complicated. Speaking with others in the know, it requires investigation not unlike something out of a Mickey Spillane story.

You must call around to every electronics store in town hoping they’ll know something. You must stop into stores early in the morning to corner the underpaid, overworked staff and convince them to reveal the shipping schedule. You might get lucky enough to overhear about it from someone who’s cousin knows a guy, etc.

Last week we scored. Eileen had phoned a store near us and got the news, delivered in a faint whisper so nobody could eavesdrop: they had them in stock right now. I raced over and of course there are none on the shelf. I managed to corner a staff member who was appropriately cagey about the exact status, but was willing to look around in the back. Another fellow was also buying one and we both felt very cool.

A few minutes later the fellow emerged from the stock room with a plain brown box. He looked around, spotted us and casually strolled over like he was not carrying anything important. We got to look inside the box to see our Wii but couldn’t touch it. We got the long lecture about accessories and extra games (I bought some) and the extended service plan (bought it too).

Then the plain brown box was paraded through the store to the check-out desk, with the small group of people trailing behind like it contained a holy relic.

We’ve had the Wii for several days now and find it screaming fun. My favorite Wii Sports game is the bowling, favorite Wii Play game is the cow racing. I’ve started the Zelda game too, its pretty well done although not as well integrated with the Wii-style controls as I’d hoped.

Is there a Wii in your future?