ADAMcon XIII at the CWRU Autonomous Robotics Lab, Saturday, 14 July 2001

On Saturday, 14 July 2001, the delegates of ADAMcon XIII made an "away mission" to Rich Drushel's LEGO robot lab at Case Western Reserve University, home of his famous Autonomous Robotics course. Six groups of three people each built (out of LEGOs) and programmed (in C) an autonomous obstacle-avoiding robot, and ran it in a walled arena. At the end of the 4-hour session, everyone had a working robot. Great fun was had by all, as you'll see in the photos.

Click on the photos to see (much!) larger versions.

Note: the large photos are raw and may need touching up in Photoshop, etc.

Helpful ADAMites. (L to R) Judy and Meeka Slopsema help PJ Herrington and Elanor Drushel build their Johnny Cab robot chassis.

Programming the Johnny Cab. (L to R) Doug, Bob, and Judy Slopsema.

Murray McCullough tests his robot, which is still tethered to the host computer.

PJ and Elanor add to the drawings left behind earlier in the week by Elanor's sisters Christina, Diana, and Gretchen.

Bob helps Frances Clee and George Koczwara with an IC program.

Russell Vilneff and Jillian Arnott at work on robot code. (Guy Bona is hidden behind Russell.)

More ADAMites at work. (L to R) Ron Mitchell, Herman Mason, Richard Clee, and Pamela Clee.

Composite of the completed blackboard mural.

Portrait of Elanor, drawn by PJ.

Meeka and Judy look on in horror as Doug and Bob decide to soup up their Johnny Cab.

Bob and Doug's Monster Truck-style Johnny Cab.

The Monster gets stuck on a rock, one of the obstacles in the walled arena.

As robots are completed, people start to test them in the arena.

More arena testing.

A Johnny Cab (R) and a robot chassis obstacle. The green X on the carpet is left over from Rich Drushel's summer robot course for high school science teachers; it's a restart point for that course's Light Tag contest.

A stock Johnny Cab versus The Monster. Marvin Martian and a wind-up tin robot on a bicycle can be seen as obstacles.

Marvin Martian has been knocked down.

And so has Baby Dinosaur.

Close-up of The Monster.

The robot free-for-all is now in full swing.

Even more arena testing.

Pamela and Guy discuss their robots.

(L to R) Frances, Murray, Jillian, Dale Wick, and Pamela observe the robots.

Frances and Elanor.

Elanor and Meeka.

The Monster successfully negotiates the ramp.

Time to leave for supper at Mama Santa's in nearby Little Italy! Pamela, Russell, and Guy dismantle their robots.

Rich Drushel uses ADAMs in his robot course for a scoreboard and a time clock. Here's part of the setup, running a screensaver program in SmartBASIC 1.x called HGR2FUN2.

Close-up of the screen saver.

Another view of the screen saver. Notice that the infamous color bleeding bug in HGR2 mode has resulted in solid blocks of color 8 pixels wide.

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Last updated Wednesday, 18 July 2001, 6:53 P.M., by RFD