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Handy
Board - The Handy Board is a palm-sized "Programmable Brick", a
small computer used as the brains in our robotic creations.
Crickets
- The latest in Programmable Bricks...they're cheap, they're small
(not much bigger than a LEGO brick) and they can talk to one another!
Epistemology
and Learning Group at the MIT Media Lab - developers of the
Programmable Bricks.
The
Art of LEGO Design. A seminal article by Fred Martin,
originally published in The Robotics Practitioner that
presents a variety of tips, tricks, and ``design clichés'' for
building with the LEGO Technic system. Available as a Adobe Acrobat
PDF file (974 KB).
Beyond
Black Boxes - Construction kits that let kids build their own
scientific instruments. In an NSF-funded project called Beyond
Black Boxes, children are using Crickets to design their own
instruments for scientific investigations.
MIT
6.270 Robot Contest - 6.270 is the course number of MIT's LEGO
Robot Design Competition Project. In 6.270, students receive a kit
containing LEGO parts, electronics, sensors, batteries, motors, and
wire, and have one month to design, build, and debug an autonomous
contest robot.
Computer
Clubhouse - an after-school learning center where youth from
under-served communities work together on computer-related projects,
such as robotics. The goal is for youth to become fluent with new
computational media, becoming creators (not just consumers) of
computer-based projects. One example is a project that is starting at
a new Computer Clubhouse site at the Patriots Trail Girl Scout
Council headquarters in Boston. The project, which is being funded by
a three year grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, is based
on the Beyond Black Boxes effort and will involve girls in building
their own instruments for scientific investigations.
Trinity
College Robot Fire-Fighting Contest - Annual Fire-Fighting Robot
Contest sponsored by Trinity College and held on their campus in
Hartford, Ct. in mid-April. This is the largest, public, true
Robotics competition held in the U.S. that is open to entrants of any
age, ability or experience from anywhere in the world. The most
recent contest was held the weekend of April 17 & 18, 1999 at the
Trinity College campus.
A
Robot Laboratory for Teaching Artificial Intelligence - Web site
describing the course developed by Deepak Kumar (Bryn Mawr) and Lisa
Meeden (Swarthmore).
Autonomous
LEGO Robotics Course at Case Western Reserve University - Web
site describing the course developed by Randall D. Beer, Hillel J.
Chiel, and Richard F Drushel. You can also read about their course in
the June, 1999, edition of the Communications of the ACM.
The
Sixth Annual Mobile Robot Competition at the AAAI-97 conference -
was held in Providence, RI from July 27 to 31, 1997.