In year 2001, one colleague (C. Molter) and myself, with the help of two students, have develloped a small Robot. We wanted to use robots like this one to demonstrate in real-world the AI algorithms developped at the lab. The robot have, as its heart, a JStamp MicroController AJ80. The machine-language of this microcontroller is the standard java byte-code invented by Sun. It means you can program the robot in java and still have fast native execution. So, the competences of the Lab. in java programming can easily be used. The robot have at it's disposal a color CMOS camera of 352x280 resolution. It has the possibility to move 11 servo-motors at the same time. However, actually it has only 6 motors: 2 for the wheels, 3 for the grip in the front and one to rotate the camera. I have worked a lot to add a bluetooth module to the robot to communicate with other robots of the same kind but I must admit it was a failure. What went wrong? Did i burn all the chips during the soldering process? I don't know. The physical part of the robot is made with meccano. It's good souvenir from my young days! I personnaly think that all these lego-based construction games really destruct the ability of the children to build (and see) 3D objects. As a matter of fact, the qualities of the mechanical engineers are dropping and i personnaly think the cause is inside all these legobrick-contruction-games (serious studies are done in the UK at this subject). Use mecanno! ( pub :-) ).
The wonderfull site of Electronics in Meccano is mirrored here (old version). It's really a GREAT site! Have a look! They are building a completely new site, with everything re-done.