The Legway
 

Forgive me if you've seen this before but I thought it was pretty cool, even cooler than my two-wheeled gyro-balanced UFO buddies!

http://perso.freelug.org/legway/LegWay.html

Ya that's right, I'm back.

I haven't seen that particular robot. But at Disney Village next to Disney World Lego has a store dedicated to nothing but uses for Legos. Some of those things are made with hydraulics and complicated electrical circuits.

Looks like Lego's aren't just for kids anymore.

I own one of those UFO (gyro-head) buddies... I bought one way back when you first mentioned them :) It's collecting dust up on a shelf...

By the way, I've indeed seen this Legway page before. I always wanted to buy a Lego Mindstorm kit. Back in H.S., we had access to Fisher-Technic (sp?) kits that were sorta like these Lego kits. Control was through a PC using a data cable.. The PC ran a MS DOS application and we used a version of basic to program them. The kit included light sensors, switches, motors, gears, pulleys, axles, building bricks... all sorts of interesting actuators and linkages...

We once built a "5 story" high factory which was completely computer controlled. We moved little bottles (represented by single small plastic bricks) through the factory.. over conveyor belts.. moved them up to each level using an elevator... very cool!

(now how do I make this Segway related?)

I experimented with mercury switches back then...

In my junior year, I had entered a robotics competition which was held at Boston University called "King of the Hill" - I believe. We had to construct robots that could climb a certain grade... establish position on top of the hill and maintain that position against an opposing robot.

We used mercury switches to establish our robots lean... We knew when we were climbing.. when we began to settle over the hump... and each mercury switch, set at a pre-determined angle or trigger point, would activate a series of on-board actions. For example, one might cut off a motor.. Another activated a couple of grappling arms that swung out and grabbed the sides of the hill - securing our position.

I had considered these types of fluid switches as a very basic version of the inner ear. If I had access to a Lego Mindstorm kit, I might run over to Radio Shack and buy about 20 mercury switches... set them at different angles... design the software to read the switches in order to establish an angle... look for patterns in how the switches were activated in order to determine which was the device might be leaning...

And of course control the motors to compensate...

I haven't thought out an algorithm to control it all... But it would be a fun little Lego project.

Regards,

Frank A. Tropea