11:00am Class

Sensor Class by Thomas Messerschmidt

Today's Robotic Society of Southern California meeting began with everyone showing up to talk about their current project and to greet new members.  The meeting started out with a class by Thomas Messerschmidt about robotic sensors.  Nearly every type of sensor you can place on a robot was discussed and demonstrated.  It was a very informative class prompting lots of questions and discussions about various robotic sensors and their operation. 

All of the sensors were demonstrated using the Arduino Microcontroller and the C Programming Language.

Some, but not all of the sensors discussed are listed here.

• Bumper Switches (Lynxmotion, VEX, ...)

• Tilt/Angle Accelleration Sensors (Parallax tutorial, Robotshop, Pololu, ...)

• Laser Range Finders & LIDAR (Robotshop, ...)

• Speech Recognition Sensors (Active Robots, ...) 

• Rotational Angle (Robotshop, Sparkfun, ...)

• Electronic Compass (Sparkfun, Robotshop, ...)

• Global Positioning Systems (Robotshop, ...) 

12:00 PM - 12:30 PM - Break

12:30 Business Meeting

Website is up and running

Robo Magellan and Hallway Contest Rules to be posted on the Website.

Announcement block to be added to the website.

1:00 Show and Tell

Member created arduino board (Bot Board) - Goal is to enable every member to build a robot.

Dan Morins - Automated robot card with servo control.  Supposed to do figure 8's automated. Hopes to compete in hallway competition.

Demo of robot Elvis, with hacks to control eyes and head movement.