Nice Robotics Course Online

erco

Good information about robotics and the Basic Stamp 2 at http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~robo2005/ , looks to be a 2005 University of Pennsylvania summer course. Big site map in Frames format, lots to look at.

Specific Stamp info is in the Labs section, halfway down on the left menu. This links to 3 labs showing various experiments with switches, pots, phototransistors, ultrasonics, motors & servos.

My favorite·was lab #2, which shows how to use a·phototransistor to replace a photocell in a standard RCTIME format (halfway down the page).·Just using·a· Radio Shack phototransistor, it works really well, over the full spectrum of light including IR (whereas most photocells are most sensitive to yellow-green light). I use it to measure reflectance of objects with a simple IR LED instead of a pulsing 38kHz source/IR receiver package. It gives an analog value of the light level (using RCTIME) which is sometimes more useful than the digital yes/no presence of a 38 kHz signal. It can yield indirect range and heading information for robot navigation.

Just watch the polarity when you hook it up. A photocell doesn't care about polarity, but a phototransistor does.

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·"If you build it, they will come."

Humanoido

Erco, that's a really great find! Those phototransistors versus photocells are like day and night. They operate much faster and can be very light sensitive. I built an interface to power the observatory from CaS photocells, then later upgraded the circuits to phototransistors. I have a new circuit built with a Basic Stamp and wrote code to measure response time of the CaS cells. It's currently transforming into a robot circuit (Penguin of course...) and being developed to transmit data. That's why speed is being studied. I have to find the Chinese word for phototransistor (and crystal resonator), then I can pick some up from the local parts skyscraper. A reasonable estimate is about 200 to 300 stores in one skyscraper. About two buildings down, there's another skyscraper with parts. Each company is like a Radio Shack. Ever feel like a kid in a candy store?

gncguy

MIT now posts all of its course material online.· They have serveral on autonomy and robotics in the Electrical, Aerospace, Mechanical engineering departments.· Also of course in the computer science department.

erco

Good to know. Do you have any links?

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·"If you build it, they will come."

Greg Norton

MIT courses can be found here:

ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Greg