Robot Mechanics

My build for the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition continues.  Slowly.  I intended to be busy with system integration by now, but I haven’t even built the physical platform. Mechanical design is difficult because there are many inter-related factors to consider.  For example, the motor selection partially determines weight which in turn partially determines motor selection. …

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Mark Simonsen of Beagle Bros to keynote KansasFest 2010

From KansasFest: KANSAS CITY, MO — December 22, 2009 — Mark Simonsen, employee number three and later owner of Beagle Bros, will be the keynote speaker at KansasFest 2010. At Beagle Bros, whose popular software products for the Apple II hobbyist demonstrated the publisher’s quirky sense of humor, Mark developed software including Flex Type, Beagle BASIC, …

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SparkFun Autonomous Vehicle Competition

I’ve run off and entered the SparkFun Autonomous Vehicle competition in April.  The rules are pretty simple: Create a vehicle that can autonomously navigate around the SparkFun building Autonomous vehicles (robots!) fascinate me.  But, there’s a problem:  I don’t have a robot.  I have assorted parts and plenty of ideas but no robot.  My personal goals …

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