Superpositioned

I’m a sucker for interesting robots. Especially if they are built out of Legos. Everybody loves the Legway, but you have to admit that the concept is overly simplistic. The real challenge is building the system around the limited resources of Lego’s RCX.

Now meet another balancing robot courtesy of Maurits Kooiman on Lugnet. This one balances on one wheel and apparently uses two RCX bricks and four sensors along with three tires to maintain balance on the axis perpendicular to its unicycle. The robot balances on the main axis by directly powering the wheel. The axis perpendicular to its unicycle is balanced by the set of rotating tires. The fourth tire seems to be a freely swingy pendulum, but it may in fact be controlled by yet another motor. Check out the video!

Amateur Logic has been podcasting interesting projects including the active cantenna in episode 3. Their latest episode is straight from the Capital City Hamfest. There is an ARRL review of the amateur radio effort during Katrina, a presentation about Skywarn, and an inspiring amateur satellite radio demonstration. There is not much technical information, but it is a great introduction to what being a ham is about.

To learn more about amateur radio visit arrl.org or amsat.org.

If you have ever wanted to play pong on a three dimensional display, then this one is for you. There are 1,000 white LEDs in the matrix that can refresh at a rate of 60 fps.

There are videos included, and they also dance to music. I don’t imagine the videos do the display any justice, though.

This is a Google Video of a 500kV switch opening in the Nevada desert. I really wish I could have been there.

Also check out a 345kV switch opening. This story got buried on digg. I’m not sure how something so popular got buried, but I saved something from the comments:

As the switch first swings open, the gap is very small and the voltage makes an arc as it breaks down the air (turning it from an insulator to a conductor.) Once this arc is established it grows in length as the switch is opened further since most of the air between the switch contacts has already been rendered conductive. Notice that the arc rises as time goes by because the arc heats the air and hot air goes up. The arc goes through the longer path because that hot air that is rising is still more conductive than the cold air down below which replaces it. Eventually the conductive air rises enough that the path through it has to also go through the colder non conductive air and this breaks the arc.

Research at Cornell has made the first steps in evolutionary robotics. Their robot successfully make copies itself without any human interaction.

The next step is to train the robots to optimize themselves while reconstructing. Their research concentrates on how life adapts, evolution, and replicating these concepts in robots.

Some ‘talented’ students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham searched for own idol through engineering related song parodies during an open house. The videos are hysterical. The parodies include:

• Friends in Three Phases
• In da EE Club
• Ohm’s Law Pie

Luckily, they will be making plenty of money at their day jobs.

Justin describes how to build a DIY four part motor. It requires a battery, a wire, a screw, and a small disc magnet. The hardest part is getting the screw to hang from the battery.

The way this motor works (as shown below) is by creating a closed circuit, where the current actually flows through the magnet. When this happens, a magnetic force turns the magnet, which spins the screw.

He also posted a Google video of the motor in action. This project has always been great for procrastination or entertaining youngsters.