Introductions
Group organization
- Discussed various ideas for how to organize.
- Competitions?
- Teaming w/ local educational orgs?
- Start with the basics and work up? Arduino, Parallax, MindStorms?
- Age groups? Any age is welcome.
Skills inventory
- Lots of programmers/developers.
- Not too many mechanical/electrical engineers.
- No venture capitalists.
Projects?
- Build something for a competition?
- Build a CNC machine which can be used for future projects? There seemed to be a lot of support for this idea. Agreed to continue discussion on the mailing list (http://groups.google.com/group/iowarobotics).
- Bring your own and share/seek assistance?
Matthew Nuzzum demo’d his VEX r/c platform wheeled robot.
- Controller from http://www.vexrobotics.com/
- Aluminum body with two drive motors and 4 wheels.
- Uses tank-style steering.
Gentleman from the Twin Cities Robotics Club (sorry, arrived late and didn’t catch his name) brought his ~70 pound robot
- About 30 pounds of the weight is battery.
- Has a sonar array and Web cam for sensors.
- Plans to put an on-board Linux computer.
Some links to Web sites brought up during the meeting: