I saw this video on Youtube and it let me speechless... I know who is the mastermind behind the project and after I visited his website I found out I know several other members as well. Steve Hassenplug is the guy who made the balancing Legway, the Connect Four Full Contact and Stick, the Robo Magellan Green Monster, the Great Ball Contraption and other cool stuff you can read about on his website. I had the honor to visit his home, see his Lego creations, compete against him, assist him a few times with the training of his FLL team. I wish we could meet again.
But his (and his friends) latest project goes way behind what regular people can do. They had help from the Lego Company. Why? Because there are over 100,000 Lego pieces in this project and if bought retail, it would cost around $30,000! Wow!
Of course, you know I want them to actually hack/destroy one another when they take another piece. Like the star wars hologram chess - One picks the other up and throws it down
I was thinking about this same concept when I talked to Pat M. about integrating a chess service in MRL, the bots could probably be more dumb and take commands from a single central computer. Maybe he’s doing this too, haven’t gone to the web site yet. I imagined 32 PM mini-sumo bots and MRL directing them all like it does bug toy. The color markers in the center of the square are unique identifiers, but who uses them? The bots themselves or an overhead camera? I don’t think you’d even need the markers in an overhead camera set up.
How fun ! Let’s sit down in front of the fire, sip some wine, and watch Deep Blue vs Kasparov reenactment :D
The movemnt of the pieces is not very inspiring. It is hard to tell an actual move from pieces just getting out of the way, no cool capturing animation, no nothing. Resetting the board took forever. If you can’t do animations at least make the reset more interesting. One way to accomplish that would be by moving many pieces at the same time. It would look like chaos but then it would all fall into place.
However, I do feel inspired… but since I don’t have legos I would build it out of cardboard… I could probably use a good sponsor too… This could end up costing a lot…
In case you didn’t recognise me, I’m Gabriel from LRGOAA. Interesting to see you here, as this is mostly a “sheet metal” robots place, although the majority of the robots here are made from plastic. Haven’t got a chance to get a NXT kit, so my Lego bots got on the backline, but I miss the fun at BrickFest and the LRGOAA chalenges. Life is definitely boring in Toronto (well, at least robotics events related). In case you’ll ever get this far away from home, let me know, I would love to have a chat with you.
