Robots

Somebody awesome told me to write about robots. It also looks like I have found a way to talk about games as well.

Somewhere in my massive list of purchases I would like to make in the near to distant future is an item that says "mindstorms of the lego variety". While I don't know how to build a robot, I think I could certainly make something with mindstorms. I wouldn't need to build the moving parts and figure out how they are controlled. I would just need to put the parts together correctly and then write the proper code for the controller that it comes with. I believe that there are ways to write to the controller using C rather than the simplified language it normally uses.

The robot I want to make would be semi capable of playing Street Fighter. That is, I want it to be able to input moves using my arcade stick. A PS3 controller is also possible, but the arcade stick is quite a bit larger, so it would be simpler to get the correct clearances and such for the various parts. Regardless, I would want this robot to accept inputs in the form of 214P and it would then move the control stick in a quarter circle forward and then press a punch button. Pressing the buttons shouldn't be too difficult. If I gave it six fingers, and simple down-up motion of it would suffice. Giving the other "hand" 360 motion might be slightly trickier, especially making it smooth enough and quick enough to do a move correctly.

Since I don't have mindstorms nor have I ever used it, I do not know how difficult it would be to create the robot and give it the proper degrees of motion. If I could do it though, the next grand part of it would be the ability to react to on screen actions. I'm pretty sure mindstorms has a webcam, but computer vision is not trivial, the webcam is at 30 fps, street fighter is at 60fps and nyquist.

Maybe someday.