dan_e6

i read somewhere about books on how to create a moving robot using your computer program as the brain to make it move around. how complex would this be. what i dont understand is how you instruct the computer to move the gears and all that

Iceplug

Depends on how complex you want your robot to be. Of course, they're still working on a robot that can stand and walk erect.

As for moving gears and stuff, they usually use some type of electric motor (one that converts electrical signals into movement by means of magnets probably) and then there's probably some circuit that will transform the signal into an appropriate current that drives the electric motor that turns the gears. Of course, to do this with the computer, you'd probably have to have a program that sends data through one of the computer ports and that goes into the robot, which goes into the electric motor circuit.

DaftasBrush

There's a LEGO system that allows you to do something similar.... not direct control from your PC... but (more interesting I think) you can write the control program in VB then download it into the "Control Brick" via IR... switch it on a see what happens.

As I remember it's quite nicely done, you've got objects for Motors, Sensors etc and you can just build the code to decide (based on the sensor input) what to tell the motors to do.

You could make that decision process as complex as you liked... and the advantage of the LEGO... it's easy to build little vehicles and all the motors and sensors and stuff come "ready to go" without a lot a fiddling around with soldering irons and circuit boards. Which, whilst not too difficult, just delays the good stuff.... finding out if your control algorithms work, and making them better / faster / do more and more complex things.

AFterlife

They are much further then you think they are....Check this out.
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO/videoclip/
http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaP...type%3Dpartner
http://analogik.com/multimedia_qrio.asp

dan_e6

its called mindstorm robotic invention system 2.0
ive got it, got it a few years ago. it was a great tool for learning about robotics and all that but it was limited in the designs you could do. it is extremely hard to come up with your own robot designs

hedgehog24

I had a kit that allowed you to attach the lego motors to a ZX Spectrum. It came with a book with a few different designs including a walking robot but when I tried it my robot just took half a step and fell over. So I went back to using the Sepctrum to play Dizzy and Bubble Bobble.

I probably still have the kit somewhere along with both my Spectrums.