[Embedlets-developer] Re: RCX & RIS, a fading glory? - Advanced alternatives: JCX, Embedlets

[Bruce B. <bb...@sy...>]

At 12:26 AM 1/30/2003 -0500, Kyle McDonald wrote:
>Steve Baker wrote:
>>But there is another approach to the hobby - to actually want to build
>>robots that can do meaningful things - that push the envelope of what's
>>possible in robotics - not push the envelope of what's possible with Lego.
>>For people (like me) who want to do those things, the limitations of the
>>RCX are not just an amusing problem to circumvent - they actually prevent
>>you from doing what you'd like to be able to do.   It's extremely frustrating
>>to be in a situation where you could build a really interesting robot - only
>>to find you can't because of the arbitary limit of 3 motors and 3 sensors.
>>Nothing else in Lego is limited in that way.
>I agree with this wholeheartedly. And I think that LEGO is missing
>out on great opportunities in this market because of these limitations.

I agree whole-heartedly.

This is the idea behind JCX which has now been in development for over a 
year, and has been rather extensively alpha-tested at a major university. 
This  past fall students at the University of Utah were able to use the 
CMUCam vision sensor and build *autonomous* (no PC with the camera on it!) 
robots:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/classes/cs4710/teams.html
autonomous checker-playing robot:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/~mundt/cs4710/
soccer playing robots:
http://www.cielguard.com/

We are finally into the move to production on JCX. (If the economy were 
better we'd have been done a year ago.) A JStamp CPU board for JCX is being 
prototyped this week and work on the RFModem is crawling along.

The point of this message is not only a shameless plug for JCX vaporware 
(it's really coming this spring) but to sound an upbeat note that there 
will soon be practical alternatives to the RCX for "real, serious" robots 
using the Lego mechanicals and sensors and motors (also those of HiTechnic 
and other companies).

We plan to sell some kit of JCX sufficient for initial work for about 
US$500, which is a fraction of competitive robot products.

Last year an engineer from Lego in Denmark contacted me and we are planning 
a product swap and further dialog, so, at some level, Lego is aware of and 
interested in JCX. Perhaps Dacta or whomever will pick up JCX once it 
becomes "real" and is shipping.

I realize for the purists this is not an answer simply because Systronix is 
not located in Denmark and is not part of the Lego group. But if all you 
want is a viable, powerful, expandable, open system...

There is also a new 'Embedlet' SourceForge project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/embedlets/
which touches on the issue of creating firmware and hardware modules which 
could easily plug together for variety of applications including robotics. 
It's all Java and open standards based, and there is a very active mail 
list. And - it's Open Source. (I'm blind copying the embedlets list with 
this message). There are some university-level educators active in this 
project, too.

So I am very optimistic about the future of Lego robotics! By this summer 
there should be a whole raft of interesting new technology available.

Bruce Boyes

http://www.jcx.systronix.com/


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