Minutes from the June 2003

Connceticut Robotics Society Meeting:

Total attendance: 14

The meeting started with a 3 minute movie about the company where Scott currently has a summer job. The movie showed several welding robots as well as some new technologies that the company is working with.

Since Scott is leaving for college this summer, elections were held at this meeting for the new officers. Jake is the new president, Jim and Mark W. are the Vice-Presidents, and Walter is once again secretary/treasurer.

Scott then talked about a robotic competition he recently attended. There were competitions such as sumo, stair climbing, and pneumatic competions. Scott also brought in several magazines and catalogs for everyone to look through.

After this, Les told everyone that he found a great company to make club T-Shirts. The club will be holding an art contest to see who can come up with the best logo for the shirt (12x 12 inches in size).

Jim talked about his recent modifications to the web site. He also talked about some of his future plans for the CRS website including articles, and a message board!

Mark then showed everyone his latest work on his "unicycle" robot. He is currently building small gas thrusters to keep the robot centered. He described how these thrusters are made and also showed everyone his nearly completed thruster. Nice work Mark!

David was up next and he showed everyone his Lego hockey robot that was able to hit the hockey puck a considerable distance! He also talked about his ideas for a robot hockey contest. Good job David!

Contests were then discussed and decided on. There will be one contest a month (except perhaps for April) and these contests will be posted ahead of time on the web site.

Bill was up next and he showed everyone some new motors that he bought from American Science and Surplus. These motors were extremely powerful!

Next up was the rope climbing contest. The contestants were Bill and Mark W.

Bill brought in two different robots for the contest. One used grippers to climb the rope as a human would and was able to detect the ends of the rope using bump sensors. The other used two small rollers that hugged the rope and would climb by spinning these rollers.

Mark's entry used Lego gears to grab onto the rope. He also used a light sensor to detect the top of the rope and climb back down (the rope had some black electrical tape at the top).

All three robots did very well and in the end, the results were as follows:

1'st place: Mark - 13.02 Seconds
2'nd place: Bill's roller 'bot - 20.97 Seconds
3'rd place: Bill's gripper 'bot - 30.2 Seconds

Congratulations to both contestants!

There was then one more contest. This contest was a "Tug-of-War" contest between Jim's robot and Mark's robot. Both robots were made using Legos, however Jim used large wheels to drive the robot while Mark used treads. It was a very close competition and for a few seconds both robots were pulling with equal force, however in the end, Mark's robot was able to overpower Jim's. Good job to both contestants!

The meeting adjourned around 3:30pm