[Robotgroup] [RE] So.. been Robotin' long? :)

[Mark Hinkle]

   I built my first robot in 1993.
   I bought a cheap Radio Shack remote control car and and a
   walkie-talkie. I designed a circuit (wirewrap) that used telephone
   touchtones for collision avoidance. IR sensors (three in front and one
   in back) had a range of three feet and operated at a frequency of
   1kHz. The sixteen combinations meshed well with the 16 available tones
   for the touchtone encoder. The tones were transmitted via the
   walkie-talkie to another one at a remote computer (an IBM 8086 PC,
   which is what we had in the class labs in those days).
   A decoder translated the tones back into TTL and were placed on a
   custom ISA card I built (wirewrap). The computer software (written in
   hand-coded assembly and some C) determined if the car was about to
   crash and then sent a segnal to a relay card from Metrabyte that was
   wired to the car's remote control.
   Thus, I had C.A.R.R., or Computer Assisted Roving Robot.
   I built it during summer school in a special projects class (I was the
   only student in it) that was taught by the department head.
   I passed.
   The big problem I had to overcome was the powersupply switching nose
   from the computer. Those things were NOISEY. Wirewrap doesn't lend
   itself well to noise immunity.
   I still have CARR... somewhere... in a box... someplace... in multiple
   boxes, actually.
   Sorry. No photos.
   Mark
   ---------[ Received Mail Content ]----------
   Subject : [Robotgroup] So.. been Robotin' long? :)
   Date : Tue, 14 Nov 2006 09:27:22 -0600
   From : Vern Graner
   To : Austin Robotgroup Mailing List
   Ok, so how long have *you* been involved in robotics? I found this
   photograph that tells the story for Kym & I:
   http://www.notepad.org/robo-wedding.jpg
   Photo was taken at our wedding in April of 1987... Back when I had
   hair!! :D
   Bonus points if you can tell me the type of robot pictured there (and
   yes I still have it!)
   So any of you have any early photos or stories to share? :)
   Vern
   ---------------------------------------------------------
   My parents just came back from a planet where the
   dominant lifeform had no bilateral symmetry,
   and all I got was this stupid F-Shirt.
   ---------------------------------------------------------
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