Re: TI-H: cool

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Re: TI-H: cool


Well, It depends on the complexity. My first bot was a simple two motor walker
that uses a 4 unit Nervous Network to drive the legs. It took about a month to
make, but that was because it took forever to find good gear boxes or wait for
parts to come. I spent less than a week however actualy working on it. It was
actualy quite simple, and it worked the first time I gave it power! (a little
adjust ment was required, and I later upgraded it, but it did start working immediately)!!!

My current bot has all the mechanical aspects completed, except for feet,
which also double as banners, and I want to print some cool stuff on the
banners, rather than cut out the black an white ones from the book that shows
how to build it. I've taken a few minor liberties with the design, and it
seems to work quite well! I've tested all the muscles, and all 8 contract
perfectly (there's only 6 signals though, since there are two muscle pairs
that always contract together). The bot was begun YESTERDAY!!! I not only have
the entire mechanical frame, minus the banners and legs, complete, but I did
it and even had to leave town for some items! Not bad for two days!

The robot has a BASIC program for PC that uses the paralel port. It'd be just
as equaly possible to use an I2C 8-bit interface chip or some sort of shift
register and a latch. If you examine the BASIC code you can see exactly how it
works! It's very simple!

If you have more than 8 lines to control it get's real fun. I personaly like
to use Nervous and or Neural networks. The calcs are great though for
controlloing them. Another possibility is a Neural bot, but with sensory lines
that are manualy activated by the calc's output??? Maybe!

Francis Huang wrote:
> 
> At 10:22 AM 6/12/98 +0100, you wrote:
> 
> You make robots?  How hard is it?
> 
> >
> >Sure. Next time I update my page, I'll post them there. I'll be making an
> >update shortly since I'm almost done with a new robot. BORIS, the motorLESS
> >muscle wire robot from mondotronics, has 6 legs and makes NO noise other than
> >it's little feet tapping on the floor! It uses muscle wires instead of motors!
> >It's so cool!!!
> >
> >I've already begun the frame for Challenger Fe-LiNe (there will be two
> >challenger series bots, Fe-LiNe and K9). Fe-LiNe's body will be about a foot
> >long, more witha tail (if I add one). I may use muscle wires for the tail
> >though. They seem to work vry nicely!
> >
> >It'd be interesting to use that 8 bit I2C interface chip to control a small
> >robot! Great project! I know there is a DBA robot built into a TI-92, but a
> >small, simple one could be interesting (of course I can make it walk forward
> >with only 4 Nv units)
-- 


Richard Piotter
richfile@prairie.lakes.com

The Richfiles TI Hardware and BASIC web page:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/5081/Richfiles.html
References: