LMRv4 Donor Appreciation Robot

ignoblegnome · March 22, 2012, 6:13pm

Results: Donor Drawing Winners!

See the LMR Donor Drawing Winners - Seeedstudio Prizes page.

Intro:

As most of you know, we are running a fundraiser to help cover costs for developing LMRv4. Visit our Donation Page for more info.

Anyone who makes a donation before May 1st, 2012 will be entered into a drawing to win one of five prizes generously donated by Seeedstudio!

We need a cool robot to pick the winners. So here is your challenge.

The robot must be able to make random selections from a pool of names. There are five prizes, and just in case we want to pull 5 alternate winners. So we need 10 names picked.

The rules for the drawing will be that the first name picked gets their choice of the prizes, the second name picked gets their choice of the remaining, etc. So the robot challenge must be able to support that.

RobotGrrl has offered to have the drawing made live on her weekly Robot Party after the May 1st deadline. The drawing will also be recorded for posterity.

Rules:

The challenger must set up a system that can pick a list of 10 names from a provided list. The list of names will probably be on the order of a few hundred.
The system must provide a way to determine the order in which the names were picked.
The system must be fair. (This may seem easy but it is hard to create a physical random number generator with a uniform distribution.)
The system must use an autonomous robot as part of the process of picking a name. E.g., if a dice is used, a robot must throw the dice, or read the dice, or BE the dice :).
The system must be as transparent as possible. E.g.. A robot printing out a name on a lcd is not very transparent unless you can show how the code works step by step as the choice is made.

OK. Get those thinkers thinking and make it happen!

To be considered, you will need to post a link to a video as a comment to this challenge page. The video must show that your robot can meet the requirements in the rules above.

The winner will be selected by Nils and myself.

Update: Challenge Ends and Winner is Selected

Today is May 1st. Time to pick a winner.

It has been suggested that with two such great entries, why choose? If both contestants are ready and can be available for the Robot Party (this Thursday May 3rd at 8:00 PM Eastern/US), then let's have them both choose!

If there are no objections, I will select the first robot by coin toss. That robot will start the choosing, and will select three winners (1st, 3rd, and 5th) and two alternates (2nd and 4th). The other robot will select two winners (2nd and 4th) and three alternates (1st, 3rd, and 5th).

Update 2012-05-03: The drawing will be very late for RobotFreak (2 AM!), so his robot will not be picking live on the Robot Party, only Nils' machine will. However, RobotFreak will do a random pick of five winners/alternates, and will send me the video.

BTW, the time will be 2 AM for Nils as well. Let's give him a hand for being so dedicated to stay up and help us celebrate!

Congratulations to both Nils and RobotFreak on really great robots!

jmalt31 · March 23, 2012, 8:51am

Are we supposed to actully build the robot or

Are we supposed to actually build the robot or just give you ideas on how we would do so that you can build it?

nilsb · March 23, 2012, 9:13am

Build

Build. The ideas and rules where gathered here.

nilsb · March 29, 2012, 6:36pm

there is something chaotic going on in my lab…

ignoblegnome · March 29, 2012, 8:43pm

Science!

Science!

nilsb · April 3, 2012, 7:16am

there is some soldering going on in my lab…

vishurockssrivastava · April 13, 2012, 2:51am

Do we have to build a robot?
I know if this might sound silly but do we actually have to build one? The only robot that will actually be random will be one that uses a random number generator. A ball picking robot looks like it is random but people might say that you have placed a particular ball at a particular place or if a blower is used then they might say that you have stopped it so that your favored ball comes at the right place and that it is cheating. If a random number generator is to be implemented in a robot, it will be done in it’s software and the hardware will just display the output. I can write a C++ program for you which uses a random number generator and picks the winner. It can have any number of participants as input and give any number of winners as output. The coding will be posted as well so that transparency is maintained. And you guys can enter the data yourself to make it free of any bias that I might have made. I’ll make one anyways and you can use it if you want.

nilsb · April 13, 2012, 3:46pm

We are robot makers.
We are robot makers. How should we as LMR approach this draw if not with a robot?

ignoblegnome · April 18, 2012, 7:40am

Just back from holiday. So

Just back from holiday. So far, it looks like Nils is the only one working on a cool challenge robot. Come on, folks! May 1st is just around the corner!

ignoblegnome · April 24, 2012, 7:16am

Nils tells me his machine

Nils tells me his machine for making the draw is almost working. We are getting really close to the end.

Won’t anyone else get in the spirit and make a robot for the draw? It’d be fun to see what people come up with.

robotfreak · April 24, 2012, 7:53am

I’m working on a robot for

I’m working on a robot for the draw, too. Nothing spectaculary, only a simple robot arm. But it should do the job. The hardware is finished, but no programming has been done yet.

ignoblegnome · April 24, 2012, 10:42am

Good to know. I have an idea

Good to know. I have an idea too, but I don’t know if I can get it done in time!

robotfreak · April 26, 2012, 5:39pm

Here is my competitor for

Here is my competitor for the challenge:

https://www.robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/node/32398

No bells and whistle, no blinken lights.

nilsb · April 29, 2012, 7:57pm

Chaot

Here is my contestant for the challenge. A machine that creates random numbers using a magnetic pendulum.

Here is the Chaot documented: https://www.robotshop.com/letsmakerobots/node/32402

Here the first video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdvTJTLsm4A

nilsb · April 29, 2012, 8:06pm

Shake to create initial random order

Nice work RobotFreak. The wood piles can be shaken so there is a initial random order generated. From there your strategy is convergent - it converges to zero. Each draw selects one winner.

My solution has no convergence so it might take ten minutes to draw all winners, or one day, or one week and for the worst case: for ever.

ignoblegnome · April 30, 2012, 7:54am

Looks like we have two

Looks like we have two challengers, unless there is a last minute entry.

Nice work, both of you. We’ll pick a winner the day after tomorrow, and we intend to use the robot to draw winners live on RobotGrrl’s Robot Party on May 3rd.

ignoblegnome · April 30, 2012, 8:18am

Nice and simple. How will

Nice and simple. How will the drawing work? Here’s my thoughts.

Let’s say we have 145 donors to select winners from. That’s probably too many to make the drawing with a single pick of the robot arm. If you put in an equal number of dowels labled 0 and 1, it can select the first most significant digit. Then put in a set of dowels with an equal number labled 0 through 4, and it can select the second digit. Finally, pick the third digit from a set of dowels labled 0 through 5. So that’s 3 picks for each winner selected. We need five winners and five alternates selected, or 30 picks. Could be a few extra picks due to the gripper missing or the off chance of selecting the same number twice.

Or do you have something else in mind?

ignoblegnome · April 30, 2012, 8:22am

That looks so very cool! I

That looks so very cool! I couldn’t tell from the video how the numbers would be indicated. Will you have labels on the wooden cylinders at the top of the bot?

Can you do anything in programming so that if we can feed in the number of donors to be selected from, and the robot will reject picks for each digit if they too high? Similar to how I described adjusting the labled dowels in RobotFreak’s robot to avoid picks that select numbers outside our donor pool.

robotfreak · April 30, 2012, 5:12pm

Good idea. I have including

Good idea. I have including some strirring moves of the robot arm. But it doesn’t work very well. The bowl moves more than the dowels.

robotfreak · April 30, 2012, 5:13pm

My idea is to use 145

My idea is to use 145 dowels, or whatever the number of donators is. Each dowel will get a unique number from 1…145. Only one pick per winner. There will be some extra picks needed due to gripper missing (about 3 out of ten picks). I am working on a detection routine. But I’m not sure if it will work until tomorrow.