Minutes from the February 2002

CRS meeting:

Total attendance: 18 The meeting started by watching 1/2 hour of a Popular Mechanics for Kids video featuring robotics.

After this, Scott's dad did the introductions since Scott was busy working on his science-fair project at home.

First up was Mark and he brought in the base of the CRS' fire fighting robot. A few of the club's members are working on an entry for the Trinity College Home Robot Fire Fighting contest and are making excellent progress! Nice work on the base Mark!

John then discussed what he was doing. He is working on some software for the microcontroller that the fire fighting robot will use.

It was then decided that the line following event will be held at next month's meeting (March).

Mark W. was up next and he discussed a new contest idea. This contest consists of a white circle on a black background with three poles randomly placed along the edge of the circle. These poles would have switched lights on them. The objective is for the robot to find these poles and switch the lights off through contact. When the robot pushes the switch, the light for that pole will turn off and the robot will have to move onto the next pole. Once the robot turns off all three lights, that run is successfully finished. The poles will be 6-8 inches tall, and the switch will be a 1"x 1" block three inches off the ground. This contest will be held in June.

Jake then gave an excellent discussion on stepper motors. He handed out several stepper motor demonstration boards so that the members could actually see what he was talking about. Jake went over the different methods of stepping these motors. Jake then gave out several small stepper motors that the members could keep. Thanks Jake for this interesting discussion and the motors!

The meeting adjourned around 3:00pm