18 Sep
1998
18 Sep
'98
11:57 a.m.
But what about the metal parts? Those aren't any cheaper...but you're
giving me ideas. I saw a show once on CNN about a guy at Lawrence
Livermore who is building robot bugs out of computer parts. They are
powered by neural networks. He can even pull off a couple of legs
and they'll still work. BTW, where do all of those researchers get
neural network chips?
I remember when I was a kid I was dreaming about building robots and
using
computers to control them, but all the parts and
expecially the
computers
were too expensive. I had one design based on a //c,
but this was
around
1986 when the //c was still relatively new.
Today, a kid could go to a thrift store and buy all manner of
salvageable
computer parts, including printers (to get the steppers
and gears out
of),
disk drives (for the motors and gear shafts) and of
course the
computers
to control their projects with easy to use languages
built in, all for
just a few bucks.
An entire robot could be built for under $100 with thrift store and
flea
market parts. It could include a fairly powerful and
easy to program
"brain" in the form of a Commodore 64, a Tandy CoCo, even an Apple ][
board. This stuff is everywhere and extremely simple to hack.
Man, I wish I was a kid again!
Sam Alternate e-mail:
dastar(a)siconic.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ever onward.
September 26 & 27...Vintage Computer Festival 2.0
See http://www.vintage.org/vcf for details!
[Last web site update: 09/12/98]
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