Meeting Minutes - Apr. 8, 2001

Attending

Larry Kruzan - President
Jim Frye - Vice President
Peter Campbell - Librarian and Treasurer
Andrew Black
James Frye
Bill Moser
Stephen Moser
Jimmy Holtman
Jon Gentil
Nathan Stien
Steve Hassenplug
Heather Hassenplug
Matt Hassenplug (baby)

Working Robots Attending

Brutus (Lego autonomous sumo - Steve Hassenplug)
'the red one' (Lego autonomous sumo - Steve Hassenplug)
Red thunder (Lego autonomous/IR remote controlled sumo - Stephen Moser)
Revenge (Lego autonomous sumo - James Frye)
(clear crash-n-burn type RC sumo - Stephen Moser)
(big blue wedge RC sumo - James Frye)
LYBOW (Line following - Andrew Black)

Robot Works-In-Progress Attending

Overkill (3kg sumo - Jim Frye)

Old Business

The deadline for the T-shirt competition is only a week away (15 April) and there has only been one entry so far (Peter Campbell)
Larry called for volunteers for a committee to begin organizing the sumo competition in November. There were no volunteers.

New Business

Stephen Moser asked if there was any interest for a walking competition (specifically a Lego walking competition). Larry thought that this would not take up a lot of time (as he suspected there would not be a lot of entrants) and it was provisionally scheduled for the September meeting. The rules were briefly discussed and the general consensus was that it should be a race over one meter, the robot to complete the course in the fastest time (or get the furthest in one minute) would win. There would be no size or weight restrictions.
Next Months competition (May 20th) is the line following. Jim said he would detail the course on the web site but he explained it as follows. It is a 4 foot by 8 foot course made up of 1 foot by 1 foot squares. These squares are two sided and initially one course will be made up with no breaks in the line and later a new course will be made with line breaks. The line will be 3/4" thick black on white background. The line breaks (if present) will also be 3/4" long. The line enters and leaves each square at the center of a side, curves will be anything from a gentle curve, through stepped angled to a full right angle. The straight pieces can be pure straight or wavy. There was no explanation as to what the 'winning' conditions would be but presumably the robot to finish each course in the fastest time would 'win'.
Larry briefly mentioned the Robot wars competition being held in St Louis around the middle of July.
Jim distributed copies of the latest Parallax catalogue.

The formal business concluded we proceeded to the Lego Sumo competition. Steve Hassenplug admitted that his two robots were using NQC (Not Quite C) rather than the Lego mindstorms graphical language (RCX). While this was permitted in this 'friendly' it will NOT be permitted in the November competition. The weight limit was also not strictly enforced for this friendly. The results were as follows:

1st Place - Brutus (Steve Hassenplug)
2nd Place - red thunder (Steve Moser)
3rd Place - the red one (Steve Hassenplug)
4th Place - Revenge (James Frye)

After the Lego sumo competition there was a melee and a few Informal sumo matches followed by Andrew Black demonstrating LYBOW doing line following.

The meeting broke into group discussion.

Next meeting: May 20