build a robot

I saw the cover for the latest MAKEzine and a coworker brought it into work. There’s a section devoted to BEAMbots and those look like some good, quick fun. Also, a different coworker loves engineering and has a strong interest in making robots. I’m putting some ideas together and I want to make a few BEAMbots and a larger robot (TBD on if it’s microcontroller based or has a tiny PC for a lot more power) that uses treads to move and maybe has an arm for attempting to grab things.

My next door neighbors (for 15 years, minus a couple) participate in the FIRST Robotics competition…I just recently discovered this and I thought it was awesome. The highschool kit this year used a PIC 18Fxxx microcontroller, which I could so relate to working with. Heh, arrays that are too big for it… stack issues, ah, sweet joys…

I’d like to get involved in something like that in the next year or so

My plan is to get one of the new Lego Mindstorms kits in August, but by “build a robot” I don’t mean ‘play with a pre-built one’...it’s just an easy start.

For the ‘building’ part, I could use one or more PIC microcontrollers and some motors, sensors, etc… I’ll think of it as matching and expanding whatever I end up doing with Mindstorms first…it should give me a lot of ideas. I’m already quite familiar with low level C coding and PIC I/O :)