First Robot Brighton meet a huge success

[Emily Toop]

At 8pm on a wet and dreary Thursday late in the month of January, Brighton's robot enthusiasts came together in an unprecedented numbers to attend the first ever Brighton Robotics meeting.

In all 22 people turned up at The Skiff to attend the event. We had all ranges of interests and experiences from those just interested to life long hobbyists to robotics researchers. This first meeting was a social designed to enable attendees to meet other enthusiasts, demonstrate their robots and discuss technologies. At the start, I said a few words to introduce the event and the next hour was spent talking about who everyone was and their experience and interests. Then it was play time.


As we set robots running around the room, people started to really get into the night, discussing how the bots were put together, programmed and how we could build our own versions. I only started building robots late last year and I brought four of my robots, all made from kits. There was Herbie the mousebot, the Turbot Tumbler and the two sumobots. The tumbler was rather popular due to it's unusual locomotive style, with Bill remarking how much fun it would be to build one the size of a table.

Alan, a very recent convert to robotics, brought along the sumobot that he had built over Christmas and the three sumo bots had several bouts in my rather undersized sumo ring. During this we made plans to buy a much larger piece of MDF so that we could build a proper size sumo ring, with the aim of perhaps starting a small Brighton based sumo-bot competition.



Steve, a robot builder since childhood, brought a couple of very old robots from the 80's. He had seen then while at school and had wanted to play with then there, but they had been under strict control. In later years he tracked examples of the BBC Buggy and the Jessop Turtle down through site such as ebay and could finally play with the much coveted bots. He brought his old BBC Micro along too so that we could send he bots programs and we had much fun watching them negotiating the line follower track. Steve also brought along a bot he had built recently that was arduino controlled. He had only bought the arduino a couple of weeks earlier and had built the body and so putting this together in such a short space of time was quite impressive.





Bill, a Phd fellow at the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR) at Sussex University, brought along a couple of his whizzy obstacle avoidance robots which spent a large part of the night zooming around the room impressively avoiding hitting any of the multitude of legs (human and furniture) to be found there.



Thom, a self taught robot builder, brought along his arduino controlled robot built from balsa wood and held together with glue. After a bit of last minute repair of the eye cameras with some double sided sticky tape, the little bot went tearing off across the room to the delight of everyone watching. This little robot just shows how much you can achieve with an arduino and a few household items. Very impressive.



Along with the robot worship, there were a lot of useful ideas about what events we might like to hold in the future, what robots people wanted to build and the sorts of things people might like to learn through the group. All in all everyone was very enthusiastic about the group and we now have the momentum to turn this small gathering into a useful and enjoyable event.

The Skiff was a fantastic venue and we would like to thank Jon Markwell for letting us hold the event there. I would also like to thank everyone who came along for helping make the night a fantastic one. The next event will be held sometime towards the end of February. If you have any ideas for subjects or formats for an evening, or would like to contribute in any way, please let us know.

[Steve (Pinter75)]

Yup, was a good event! I still like the idea of teams making some kind of sumo bot. DIY, Kit NXT etc. This would be a good introduction to bot building, software and electronics. With beers and bots fighting, it would be a good night.

Again thanks for getting this organised!

BTW dunno where you got Steve Pinker from? Its Steve (Pinter75) ;-)

[Emily Toop]

Sorry about that Steve, not sure where I got that from either. I've corrected it now :-). I think the sumo bot challenge would be a good first group project. I think that we may introduce this as part of the next event, give four months to build the bots and then come together for a competition night to see who has built the strongest, cleverest little sumo fighter. Something to look forward to.

[Steve (Pinter75)]

Actually, this looks like a good beginners project, Line following & racing. Which ever bot is travelling fastest, barges the others out of the way.

http://forum.pololu.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=983

[Thomas Hopper]

Really great event! I've been inspired to build a new bot too. Looking forward to the next one.

[Tristan Roddis]

Great stuff, Emily.

I've finally got round to blogging about the event too:

http://blog.cogapp.com/2009/02/06/robot-brighton/