History

In the beginning we were bored. No actually that's not true. In the beginning Robert came up with idea of a robot because he wanted something to keep us occupied so that we wouldn't become bored. So way back in 1998 we began to think about making a robot. Since them we have come a long way. And even if our robot can't do as much as it could back then (when it existed only in our minds) we have learnt a lot, including:

Assembly language progamming for the Atmel AVR microcontroller (no previous understanding of assembly language).
PHP and web design to make this website.
And heaps more stuff that I can't remember.

The Base

Anyway the first thing we did for our robot was build a base. For without a base what have you got at all? The base of robot was about the only thing we completed in 1998 along with lots of planning. We were aided in our efforts to make the robot base by our Grandfather who is a builder and good at that sort of mechanical stuff. The gears, tracks and bearings are all from old computers (what a fitting end).

Something to Drive the Base

With something to build on (a base) we began (slowly) making something to drive it. The base is driven by a small microcontroller which runs off a motorbike battery. In this picture:

you can see that base microcontroller is being test driven by a temporary brain (that's why everything looks like it's about to fall of).

[TODO - add more details here]. After getting the base going we added more stuff. The robot now includes support for receiving instruction via an infrared TV remote, and runs of a much more powerful computer. It can speak (but not hear yet). And sometime when I get more time I'll add more details.

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