Budding Idea

Hello everyone. I have an idea for a new project, now that finals are almost out of the way, but am having a little trouble on the programming aspect of the issue. I was inspired by a robot at a museum that could spell names by taking an input of your name, and then it would scan letter blocks and rearrange them. I was thinking sort of the same thing, but with Lego NXT. I would, instead of having blocks with letters, have actual 3 dimensional letters laying on the ground. You input the desired name and it will then scroll the the list of letters given to it, scan each one, and place it in another row by until the whole row is complete. First of course, when the program is started, it will calibrate itself by scanning all the letters into its memory. However, the scanning process is kind of sketchy. I've got the basic design down, I think, but when scanning, I don't quite understand the logic needed to store each scanned image as a separate letter and recall it when it when the input letters are read. Here's something like what I saw ...

Rubik's Cube Solvers

Solving the Rubik's Cube using the Mindstorms NXT has always been a pivotal point in a builder's career. This guy has gotten pass this point, but he still amazes us with his newer and newer machines. His new robot solves the cube much faster, but still uses the Nokia N95 to take pics of the cube. Here it is.


Pretty neat, huh? I have not seen anything faster than this yet. I also got the Lego Mindstorms NXT Thinking Robots book, but I have yet to build the solver yet. Have any of you seen a robot faster at solving the Rubik's Cube than this?

Robotic Arm Inspiration

For all those out there who are having a little trouble thinking about what a robotic arm is supposed to do, here is a perfect example:

Although it is remote controlled, it gives a perfect sense of what the judges are looking for in the Robotic Arm contest.

1. Start off by noticing the end effector(the grabber). It has been designed so that it can squeeze an object to grasp it tightly. Also notice the parallelogram beams in the end effector. Right off the bat, this robot looks like one with industrial uses.
2. Next, notice the number of DoF's (degrees of freedom). Although I personally have not counted, it would do you good to try and replicate the number of DoF's.

Hope this was inspiring, even though it is close to the contest end.