If you're looking for something a little different to do this holiday season, consider building the Mobile Robot kit from A. K. Peters (Wellesley, MA, (617) 235-2210). This kit contains all the electronic components required to build the Rug Warrior robot that's described in the popular book Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation.
The Mobile Robot kit ($289.95) is a small (3 1/4 by 4 1/2 inches) battery-powered computer consisting of a Motorola 68HC11 processor, 32 KB of RAM, and assorted supporting electronics to provide a final board that's complete with microphone, piezobuzzer, LCD, an infrared detector/emitter, and two photocells. Power is provided by two DC motors (which are not included), such as those that are found in Lego building-block kits.
Computer programming is accomplished by dow
nloading programs via serial cable from either a Mac or PC. Each kit contains a copy of Interactive C for either the Mac or PC. Interactive C is a subset of ANSI C and compiles to p-code. And most important, it's multitasking, which allows you to build a sophisticated robot control system.
Dust off the old soldering iron and break out a set of Legos, and you can have all sorts of entertaining robot systems running around your house by the New Year.
Photograph: The Mobile Robot kit lets you build robots that respond to light variations, noises like hand clapping, and other stimuli.
Copyright
Flexible C++
Matthew Wilson
My approach to software engineering is far more pragmatic than it
is
theoretical--and no language better exemplifies this than C++.
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Machines That Move
