Beam News Archive June 99
June 30
Jason Jones has allocated some server space for people to upload large images for display to the
BEAM list. You can upload to ftp.BEAMzine.com. The username and password are "BEAM". The pics
can be viewed at
http://www.BEAMzine.com/public/.
Terry's BEAM "emulator", PIC-Bot II, has got a new body. He has also posted a new page on Evolving Nervous Network
Robot Controllers. It has the Parallax Assembly code for a 16LF84 BEAM Ant that displays
surprising behaviour with a very simple learning algorithm.
June 28
Solarbotics is shutting down from June 30
to July 17-ish. Dave is hosting a private BEAM workshop in Telluride Colorado and then he's taking
a little well-deserved vacation time.
June 27
James Taylor may have a new source for solarcells (though the specs given seem a little too good to
be true!). We'll have to wait till Monday to see for sure. I'll keep you posted.
Here's a pic of Lotus1, Sparky's first BEAM creation. The
circuit is Ian's
"Almost Complete Walker Schematic with Reverser".
June 25
Jason Jones put up pics and an avi of those funky new Japanese Ant-sized Robots. I wonder how they move?
Ian has updated BEAM Online with a WCRG
'99 Page and a bigger better links page. He has also started his summer job with MarkT at LANL.
Good luck Ian and try your best not to sign the non-disclosure agreement! ;)
June 24
Could James Wilson please get in touch with me. Thanks.
A correction from yesterday. The BEAM competition to be held at Auuckland University is being
organised by Andrew Morrison from Auckland. Peter is just trying to help facilitate it for him by
rallying up interest.
Chris found some motors from All Electronics
Specs are as follows
1.5 - 6V DC
.46" diameter by 1.25" long
4000RPM @ 1.5V, 27mA
8000RPM @ 3V, 31mA
Part#DCM-122 / $3 each
June 23
Watch out for them Borg Rats!
Take a look at Berkley's latest research into the mysteries of insect aviation.
Robofly is their latest attemp to mimic insect or hummingbird flight. The
movies are especially cool!
The Auckland University has held and will hold a number of robot mobile competitions. They hold
the ALL Botz RoboCup Team and the Aucklandianapolis (Control RC Cars with Intelligent Active
Vision). Peter Hamer from robotOz will
hold BEAM events in conjunction with existing competitions. Contact
Peter for more info.
June 21
Lee has put up pics of Bender, a 1DOF light seeking head.
Bram has updated his BEAM
Robotics page with lots of electronics tools and some neural networks stuff.
Brad's BEAM page has been updated.
Darrell found this news story about the latest miniturization
project to come out of Japan.
June 20
Sorry about not updating. I've finally graduated from my program and am enjoying my new found
freedom!
I see that the Extreme Machines "Incredible Robots" program has brought a flood of newbies to our
little niche...just like Robots Rising did. Welcome all!
Zoz has posted Suzanne Still's Unicore analysis on the BEAM Heretics Board. Browse the Suzanne category in the people menu.
Here's a pic of Nathans solar roller. Nice job!
Check out this Gears, worms and racks set up for auction at eBay.
Addy Yeow's BEAM Page
has moved to a new address.
Richard recommends Express PCB for your
printed circuit board fabrication needs.
Justin has put a small tutorial on building a Underwater Robot up at the TRCY site. Also,
TRCY has moved their
club chat meetings to Sunday 4pm Eastern US time.
Jason has announced a chat for Friday (18th of June) at 4:00 US/Mountain at the
Yahoo BEAM Robotics club.
June 15
For you guys down under, robot-Oz now
stocks MN1381 triggers for $2.45 each and a various assortment of Panasonic Gold caps.
June 14
On Wednesday, TLC will be airing Extreme Machines - Incredible Robots. It features about 15 minutes of Mark
Tilden's latest creations.
Here's the start of Brad Rowland's BEAM
Page.
BEAM Trading Post is up and
running. Check it out if you have anything to buy, sell or trade.
Here's some specs on the Hugin Satellite.
June 11
Gone Fishing for the weekend.
Here's another article on Mark Tilden's Satbots. It seems that the Satbot technology will be incorporated as a backup
system for the Swedish Hugin satellite. This is a huge step forward for Mark's research.
RobotBooks.com has an indepth review of
the two most popular nitinol robotics books. Stiquito and The Muscle Wires Project Book.
June 10
Sorry about not updating the news section lately. I've been studying these
in preparation for my final exam.
Bob Pildner has finished a couple two motor walkers.
They use G-10 fiberglass for the frames and they look just awesome.
Here's a transcript of the Robots Alive PBS special.
June 7
Here's BotDoc's page on UCOBA, his clone of Tilden's BEAMant6.X. It has pictures and a circuit
description with links to recently revealed info about the BEAM Ant 6 series.
Visit The BEAM Swap
Shoppe to buy, sell and trade BEAM items.
Rumors of another robotics program on TV. Check the Scientific American Frontiers web site for details. I couldn't find anything
about it.
June 6
Tons of new stuff added to the BEAM
Heretics Board. Be sure to find the BEAMant 6.0 Telluride handout.
Hyndman has setup an IRC channel on afternet. It is called #beam.
June 4
Tom shared these links to Stanford's insect sized "Mesicopters".
New Scientist
Article
Stanford Mesicopter
site
Movies of prototype flying teathered
These tiny helicopters will be
released by the thousands, each providing one reading from one sensor. They are the atmospheric
counterparts to MarkT's PixelSat's.
Here's the long awaited BEAM Ant 6.X page on BEAM-Online.
Jason has a small gearbox that he wants to sell. If
you are interested, e-mail him and he'll send you an image. Going price is $7.00.
June 3
Dave is willing to trade a SCXmas pack PLUS a pager & OTU
for one of those 1044:1 gearmotors that Rick Diaz posted last month.
Brad has started a new channel in IRC for BEAM. It's on undernet at #beam.
Take a look at this
page describing a very advanced photovore.
June 1
BEAM Ant 6.X schematic and lexicon diagram
BotDoc has posted pictures of his 1DOF head using Wilf's Monocore circuit.
Check out Don Papp's
BEAM Bot(z) web page. Lots of cool pictures and a few video footage clips.
Here's a brainless MicroMouse platform being auctioned off at eBay. It looks very professional
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