Although not a true BEAM robot, this simple schematic by Randy Sargent is small, simple, slick, and effective. My own version uses a pair of pager motors and three cells from a 9V rechargeable battery. Hard to get any simpler than this device!
Frogbots! Solar-powered, at that!
Dave Hrynkiw
December 15, 2000
I missed the full segment of this story last weeks on "Discovery Channel's @discovery.ca" program, but fortunately, the've put the segment online at their website. I seems that JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratories - NASA essentially) is working on a solar-powered, single-footed robot frog. This seems like a GREAT idea for extra-terrestrial planet-surface locomotion. Check out the videos and see for yourself. Additional information at Space.com Even more technical information is here and here, in these Adobe Acrobat files from one of the researchers, Paulo Fiorini. Here's his homepage. And this is his dedicated Frogbot hompage - lots of interesting info!
Oh, and if you scroll to the bottom of the Discovery Channel / EXN page, you'll find a nice video clip of our favorite Roboticist, Mark Tilden. They shot this a few years ago, and I'm glad to see they resurrected it to be on this page.
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Tech Tip: Micro Terminal Blocks
We use many, many devices with 0.1" spaced holes, which are pretty much an electronics design standard. We're finding these 0.1" space terminal blocks incredibly useful for making solid, secure, yet serviceable connections to the rest of our designs. We'll often reach for a microcontroller board, then reach for a necessary handful of these parts […]
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Solarbotics has been listed in the excellent Make: Magazine (The first magazine devoted to digital projects, hardware hacks, and D.I.Y. inspiration) as a supplier for the Mousey Junkbot project. We have what you're looking for! Simply click on this link to get all of the Mousey parts added to your cart. (Mouse shell, battery and […]
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