The ILOVEROBOTS competition closed on the 8th Feb. Apologies for the delay in letting you know the winners - its been one of those months!
We had a good showing of robots which is encouraging. But we had only a few blueprints. Well there you go. I expected a whole lot more blueprints than robots. And honestly, I expected a whole lot more robots too (Micro mouse builders where are you? I know the Midlands has Internet connectivity I was there recently).
None the less, we have two superb winners.
For Robot Idol, receiving 163 public votes with an average score of 3 out of 5 and a total score of 524 its the Hexapod Hero Mr Matt Denton! Congratulations Matt you win £500 of credit at named UK Robot suppliers.
I am a hexapod robot, with a head that can pan and tilt. I have a blink shutter over my main lens which is built from an old 10 x optical zoom digital camera. I have six legs, each leg has 3 servos. I also have two servos to move my head, and one to work my blink shutter. Each servo is connected to my on board processor called the p.Brain. The p.Brain looks after all of my leg and body locomotion functions. I have a second computer which is connected to my CCD eye camera, and to my p.Brain via a serial link. This computer is much like a miniature home PC which runs Windows XP. I call it the CvPC. I use the CvPC to look for people's faces. Once a face is found, It tells my p.Brain which way to go to track the face. If I have been tracking a face for a certain length of time, I take a picture which is uploaded to my website: hexapodrobot.com
For Robot Blueprint, as selected by Microsoft, the winner is Mr Bob Cannon! Congratulations Bob you win £250 of credit at named UK Robot suppliers plus we're going to get your blueprint built as a Microsoft Robots Studio simulation item enabling you to explore using it. I'm also looking into building it for real but I'll let you know how I get on with that later.
I would like to develop an articulated limb system that would have some degree of compliance (i.e. sprung suspension) and have some limited independence of action, yet be able to accept co-ordination inputs from a central controller. The purpose of the system would be as a class teaching project where small teams of KS3/4 students could develop control programs for the limb or assemblies of limbs to produce a system that walks. The key feature from the teaching perspective is collaborative working to achieve a goal.
Gentlemen we'll be in contact regarding your prizes. Well done and thank you to all of you who took part in the competition!