COTS Bots

[Ryan Hughes]

Oh hey. I just came across this stuff yesterday:
https://cotsbots.wordpress.com/
(or http://cotsbots.org)

Robots built from commercial off-the-shelf parts: Cheap, quick to
build, no soldering.

That actual website is real light on code. They have a beety bit of
arduino code and some stupidly trivial processing code, but their video
has the robots following a colored ball -- they don't have the code for
that up there.

But anyway, that looks like some fun stuff to do, and it lists some good
RC cars and stuff that would work well with it.

I'm thinking that this type of thing would make a good workshop at AHA!

I'm thinking that the interested people can get together and do some
shopping, and then reconvene when the parts are all in to do the assembly
one evening.

I'm thinking: RC car body + BeagleBoard (BeagleBone) + Webcam + Arduino.
Then do fun stuff with OpenCV or that "Predator TLD" thing
(http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/)


Could be fun.

Does this seem like a fun workshop? What do I do?

--Ryan

[Josh Williams]

1) This would be awesome to have a workshop around.

2) Let me know of a date / time that works for you, and I can help get the word out.

3) There are plans brewing for a quad copter, not the same, but some similarities:  http://wiki.allhandsactive.com/Quad_Copter 

4) Let me know how I can help : )

 - Josh W.