I just went for a National Robotic Competition this year. It was my third year joining this competition.

I participated this competition together with Sua Jin Ming and Yap Yow Chun.

Even though there are three person in a team, I am the only person who did most of the work.. Yow Chun don’t even know how the robot works..Lol.

I did badly this year. Last year, i got 3rd place for states level. This year, I did not even get through zone level.

I would blame it on the short period of time i had to be prepared for the competition.

First of all, I had an exam about 3 weeks before the competition. I could not start preparing for the competition as it will affect my studies.

During the mid-term holiday, I rushed through the preparation.

I took some photos of the robot before the competition day.

Here are some of them..

]]> http://lostintentions.com/2009/06/04/visual-programming-for-kids/ Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:43:58 +0000 ssadler http://lostintentions.com/2009/06/04/visual-programming-for-kids/

Well, I happily finished my first semester at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT) at the beginning of May. It was a great semester, I coded moreso than I have in ages, had to relearn C/C++, and added LISP to my repertoire. The courses at GIT are project intensive so I was able to do some fun stuff such as writing a multi-threaded Web-Server that communicated with a Proxy Server via shared memory, implementing an inference engine in LISP, LLVM passes for detecting infeasible branches due to correlated predicates and parallizable loops, and testing out some cool robots for a HCI project that I worked on with a group of four other Georgia Tech Grad students called Bots-For-Tots. Its the last one that I’ll focus on for purposes of this entry. The project had us go through an user focused process from analysis, to design and selection, to prototyping. The end result was a programming environment we called Bot-Commander, which leveraged open source technologies MERAPI & LEJOS and of course AIR to enable children (ages 3-8) and myself to easily program a Mindstorm robot. Considering that I have 3 children, ages 1, 4, and 6 and like most geeks am immediately drawn to words containing “bot” this project was close to heart. For those of you interested in bots and/or child education below is selected content from the project.

My co-contributers included: Albert Brzeczko, Basil Udoudoh,
Dimuthu, & Bryan Hickerson

The Premise

How do we teach children technology? is a basic question that, as the ubiquity of computing in 21st century progresses, more and more parents and educators are grappling with at earlier stages of a child’s development. On the one hand the question is very important assuming that a key measure of a communities success is the number of technologists (e.g. engineering, computer science, etc…) that it outputs. On the other hand the question can be considered irrelevant since children are bound to learn “enough” about technology embedded into their communities society and culture through its application. However, another consideration is whether the question “How do we teach children technology?” is the right question to be asking ourselves. The concern is that we risk teaching technology as a set of abstract concepts that are difficult for children to learn, internalize, and apply. What is lost is that technology has the ability to serve as a platform for children at all ages to apply creative thinking across multiple disciplines and interests. That ability is largely untapped today. While there has been substantial work in leveraging technology as a learning platform for older children in certain areas, the solutions have fallen short in terms of enabling younger children (ages 3 and up) and being adopted in the mainstream throughout schools and in the home.

It was in the early 1980’s when Seymour Papert published his influential book, “Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas.” In the book Papert gave rise to a new mode of thinking called constructionism from which he argues that through technology children can now integrate the mechanical with the digital to create personally meaningful projects from which they can problem solve, test, and create new ideas and conceptual models of the world. Personally meaningful projects are those that children are driven to work on out of personal interest. Paperts research led to the creation of the Logo programming language, which was designed to be powerful enough for research yet simple enough that it could be used by children. The language was popularized with the introduction of a virtual turtle that children would teach to draw via programming.

From programmable turtles to bricks, crickets, and cats the concepts introduced by Papert have led to a host of constructionist environments that help children to learn about learning by teaching robots how to interact with the world in which they live. Through working with Papert, Lego Inc. introduced a commercial robot construction kit called the RCX Programmable Brick. Other lesser-known robot kits have become available as well and virtual robots, similar to the Logo turtle, are now free for downloading. Common constraints in all of these environments are that they typically target an age group of 8 and above and require a high degree of investment by not only the child, but also the educator (parent or teacher) in terms of training and time. In this project we will be investigating these existing tools with the goal of designing a constructionist environment that that not only targets younger children, but also reduces the cost to both the children and educators in terms of training and time, resulting in a product that is less prohibitive to mainstream usage.

The Focus Group

This section discusses the qualitative methods used for exploring the problem. We needed a focus group and we needed one fast.
The solution was a Bots-For-Tots pizza & ice cream party at my house, where I invited a bunch of my son’s classmates over (informal but it worked).

Finding Bots

Our impressive inventory of bots consisted of Lego Mindstorm and MIT’s Scratch program, which gave us a physical and virtual robot respectively. However, Lego Mindstorm targets children at the ages 10+ which we knew would likely be well above the children’s capabilities. We needed additional bots that targeted a younger age group to give an more accurate account of the current state of constructionist toys. The answer(s) lay in the acquisition of two additional robots; Pico Crickets from the Playful Invention Company and the Roamer from Valient Inc. both of which prescribed to constructionist ideas and concepts.

Composition of the Group:

• Ages ranged from 3 to 6.
• All the children were boys
• All of the parents involved professed a strong interest in their kids learning about technology.
• Two of the parents had a job directly involved with technology, while others worked in the fields of medicine, psychology, and public relations.

Execution

The plan was simple.

Step I – Grease & Sugar
First, we served all of the parents and their children Pizza and Ice Cream providing us the opportunity to talk to the parents and children about their respective background while waiting for everyone to show up.

Step II – Constructionism 101
Next, we did a learning activity that did not involve computers or actual robots. The purpose of the activity was:

1. Learn about the children’s ability to comprehend technical concepts
2. Provide an overview for kids and their parents of how each of the toys worked
3. Have fun!

We asked for volunteers from the children for both a robot and a set of computer programmers. One child volunteered as a robot, while the rest volunteered as computer programmers. We then brought out two poster boards, one empty one titled “Program” and a second one containing a set of square cut outs velcro-ed to the back labeled “Blocks.” We asked the children whether robots could “think” like we do. The children’s answers were mixed, but we explained that robots cannot think by themselves and that they need computer programmers to help them think by telling them what actions to take (i.e. creating a program). The children then participated in building a program by choosing action blocks from the “Blocks” poster-board and moving them to the “Program” poster-board. After the “computer programmers” were done creating their program we had our acting robot execute it through by stepping, jumping, growling, and barking as instructed by the program.

Programming 101

Step III – Breakout Time
After our brief course in robotics and programming we gave a very brief introduction to the different robots we had around us and then broke up, letting the children gravitate to the robots that interested them the most. We had the five following robot stations setup.

Station I – Lego Mindstorm

At the core of Lego Mindstorm is a programmable brick that has the capability of accepting input from 3 sensory devices and controlling up to three output devices (i.e. motors). While the brick has an interface for building programs directly on it, more typically users will use the Mindstorm programming environment to build a program and deploy it to the brick using either a USB cable or bluetooth connection.

Target Age Group: 10+
Observations:

• Providing a quick look at Mindstorm proved to be the most problematic for two reasons. First, if the robot was left idle it would shutdown at which point you have to re-establish the bluetooth connection to demo it. This turned out to be an inconvenient interrupt which required that we ask everyone to please wait while we re-established the bluetooth connection. Second, when using the visual programming environment for Mindstorms each action/block has a great deal of configurations, which were often difficult to see on a large screen and impossible to walk through with young children.
• Parents and children were intrigued with the possibility of creating a humanoid robot as shown on the Mindstorm Box.
• Parents found the lack of organization and hundreds of small pieces for Mindstorm to be daunting.
• Surprisingly the children showed no interest in Lego Mindstorm once we broke up across the different stations.

Station II – Pico Crickets

Similar to Mindstorm, Pico Crickets leverages a Visual Programming interface, motors, input sensors, and legos. However, Pico Crickets has two distinct differences. First, it is target towards a younger age group of 8+. Secondly, Pico Crickets strives to work with the artistic capabilities and intuition of children rather than purely mechanics (i.e. gears and motors).

Target Age Group: 8+

Observations:

• Out of all the robots, Pico Crickets held the most attention not only from children, but also parents (one parent actually built a 7 step program). Three children spent a substantive amount of time on Pico Crickets.
• The organization & number pieces in the Pico construction kit was much less daunting than that of Mindstorm.
• Children seemed to either want to play with the lego pieces or the programming environment (to create pretty programs) but did not seem to correlate the relationship between the two.
• The children using the programming environment did so to in the same way that they use legos, they were snapping together virtual blocks to create diagrams not to execute them.
• One parent remarked that they liked the toy but felt that it required to much hand holding for the children.

Station III – Scratch IDE

Scratch is a programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab to help young people learn how to develop computer programs. The development of Scratch (and its name) was inspired by the scratching process that DJs use to create new sounds and music by rubbing old-style vinyl records back and forth on record turntables, creating new and distinctively different sound out of something that exists. Similarly scratch projects allow young developers to mix together graphics and sounds, using them in new and creative ways.

Targeted Age Group: 8+

Observations:

• There was one child that played with Scratch, but that was the only robot that he played with the entire time. While he seemed to enjoy making Scratch (the out-of-box virtual cat robot) do stuff, he particularly enjoyed the more personal aspects of scratch that enabled him to upload his own picture and record his own voice to use in a program. Note: however that uploading his own picture is still a complex process for which he needed help.
• Parents did show interest in the fact that scratch was free.

Station IV – Valiant Roamer

The Roamer is a commercialized version of the physical dome shaped robot that Papert initially worked on at MIT while designing the logo language. While there is a visual programming environment for Roamer, similar to the other robots, there is no link between the visual programming environment and the physical robot. The programming environment, called Roamer World, is simply a simulation of the physical robot in a virtual world. The programming interface for the physical roamer is are the keys located on top of the robot.

Targeted Age Group: 4+

Observations:

• Both parents and children attempted to use the Roamer once but then quickly left for another toy once it did not do as they intended (which happened to always be on the first attempt).

Station V – Wacky Wigglers Building Set

Now here is a robot that you can find in your typical toy store. While the Wacky Wigglers Gears set would not be considered a constructionist kit due to its lack of an actual programming interface we still wanted to place it out there to see how children would respond to mechanical aspect to it. The objective of the Wacky Wigglers Building Set is to piece together a robot with a whole lot of gears which you can then control using a basic forward, backward, and turn motion remote control.

Target Age Group: 5+

Observations:

• There was substantive interest in the Wacky Wigglers Building set. At least three children spent time successfully putting together parts of a robot. One child in particular committed himself all the way through until the robot was complete. Note: there was no adult involvement in constructing this robot.

Dispelling Myths (another observation)

Another interesting observation that we all made at the focus group was that several children came to the party with a preconceived notion of what a robot was and it didn’t fit with the ones that we had prepared for the children. Instead 3 of the children assumed that robots were human looking and dangerous.

It is our hope that the focus group has given them a different notion of what a robot can be.

The Design Stage

In this phase of the project we brainstormed up three different possible designs to tackle the problem domain we were addressing. I won’t spend to much time on each of these because we we only chose one of them in the end.

Design I – IntelliBlocks

In brief the concept here was to implement a completely hardware based solution to alleviate the disconnect that children faced when interfacing between the computer and a physical bot. Rather than programming a robot using a computer, the program would actually become part of the environment/stage that the bot was running in (i.e. the program itself was physical). Below are some pics of some of the illustrations we put together for this design.
The first picture illustrates a lego board that a) implies the existence of a robotic train above it and b) contains an empty sequence block that can be used to program the train. We assume there are several actions that a train can perform and that children ages 3-8 would be aware of such as (go forward, backward, whistle, etc…). The second picture illustrates the use of blocks representing those actions to build a program that commands the train to loop around the train track until it senses that it is near a station at which point it blows its whistle and completes.

Design II – SoftBots

In this design, similar to above, an objective was to alleviate the disconnect that children faced when interfacing between the computer and a physical bot. However, rather than implement a completely hardware based solution in this design we proposed implementing a completely software based solution.

The picture above shows a hacked up illustration that is somewhat similar to Scratch, however our goals were to 1) improve upon the personalization capabilities by reducing the steps needed for children to record audio and take snapshots of themselves and 2) provide higher level abstractions than scratch by not treating all objects generically as a sprite, but rather for the environment to be aware of the capabilities of any given object on the stage and to know what capabilities to make available based on the combination of objects on the stage. Consider in Scratch if you had a Martian sprite and a gun sprite, one solution program the Martian to pick up the gun would be to tell the Martian sprite to move in the direction of the Gun until a color was detected and then to switch the “costumes” of the sprite to show it holding the gun. Rather we would prefer the programming environment knowing that there was a Martian bot and a Gun Bot and accordingly enabling the capability for the Martian to pick up the gun by making a high-level action “Pickup Gun” available when the Martian is selected.

Design III – Bot Commander

See Prototype

Prototyping Time

The Bot-Commander was a software/hardware based design that ended up being what we believed to be the most effective and feasible design solution that we could prototype within the given time frame (<2weeks) and with the available resources. Moreover, thanks to a presentation given by Andrew Powell around MERAPI, Mindstorm, and AIR at a recent AFFUG meeting we had heightened confidence that our goals could be achieved.

Jumping right to it, the programming environment (as an alternative to the IDE provided out of the box with Mindstorm) is shown below.

Bot-Commander

Note that the user has a set of actions on the left hand side that he or she can drag onto a canvas. There are actions for movement, sound, an sensors. The program above will wait until a sound (such as a clap) occurs then move the robot forward, to the right, in a circle, laugh, cry, and finally, play a tune.

Architecture Talk

Before considering usability we will start off with a high level view of the architecture of the prototype, which is reflected in the diagram below.

Bot-Commander Architecture

Fortunately, from an architectural perspective there was a great deal of functionality already available in the community that we were able to leverage in order to prototype Bot-Commander. Here is a brief summary of the various components that made up the Bot-Commander architecture.

• Bot-Commander – This is the UI that was implemented by the Bots-For-Tots team to effectively replace the Mindstorm visual programming environment with an alternative that is targeting younger children (ages 3-8). The UI was implemented using Adobe’s Flex/Actionscript technology and is hosted within Adobe’s Integrated Runtime (i.e. AIR), providing the best of two worlds; the web and power of desktop computing. By leveraging AIR Bot-Commander can tie in more closely to the users desktop to interact with Merapi and LeJOS.
• Merapi – Not only is Merapi an actual volcano on the actual island of Java, but it is (more importantly this team would argue) a bridge between Adobe AIR applications and Java. Merapi has been designed to run on a user's machine, along with an Adobe AIR application and provide a direct bridge between the Adobe AIR framework and Java, exposing the power and overall capabilities of the user's operating system, including 3rd party hardware devices.
• Bot-Command Generator – Implemented as a Merapi message handler the Bot-Command Generator is responsible for interpreting a sequence of actions deployed from the Bot-Command UI, generating a Java program from those actions, and then compiling, linking, and uploading the compiled binary up to Alpha Rex (via LeJOS).
• LeJOS – As and open source Java programming environment for the Lego Mindstorm NXT LeJOS was critical for us to get up and running a prototype. LeJOS allows Java developers to program Lego robots. LeJOS consists of:
  • Replacement firmware for the NXT that includes a Java Virtual Machine.
  • A library of Java classes (classes.jar) that implement the leJOS NXJ Application Programming Interface (API).
  • linker for linking user Java classes with classes.jar to form a binary file that can be uploaded and run on the NXT.
  • PC tools for flashing the firmware, uploading programs, debugging, and many other functions.
  • A PC API for writing PC programs that communicate with leJOS NXJ programs using Java streams over Bluetooth or USB, or using the LEGO Communications Protocol.
• Tiny VM – An open source, Java based replacement firmware for the Lego Mindstorms RCX & NXT microcontrollers. TinyVM's footprint is about 10 Kb. The project was forked into LeJOS back in 2000, where the Tiny VM is now a component of a larger architecture for programming Mindstorm robots.
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• Alpha Rex – Known as Roby by one of the team member’s kids, Alpha Rex is the robotic hardware that children can now program using Bot-Commander. Mindstorm robots can take on many forms, but Alpha Rex was chosen for this project due to a) his humanoid form, which often invokes curiosity in both adults and children and b) his maximization of the use of sensors and motors.

There are few other things to note with respect to the architecture diagram above. First, outside of Alpha Rex, everything else is running as one application on the user’s desktop. Second, Merapi, Bot-Command Generator, and LeJOS are running in co-operative process that is hosting an instance of the Java VM. Communication between the Bot-Commander UI (running in AIR) and the Java components happens through passing serialized objects in the Action Message Format (AMF, a format for object remoting) over sockets. Third, communication from the Desktop to Alpha Rex happens over either a USB cable or Bluetooth. In both cases, LeJOS leverages open source projects to implement the communication.

Usability Talk

It was interesting to see during our initial focus group that one of the robots that cultivated the least amount of interest from children 3-8 was the Mindstorm robot. This is interesting because Mindstorm is a) supported by a well-known toy manufacturer (i.e. Lego Inc.) and b) the most popular of any robotics kit among teenagers and/or adults. However, its not surprising from the point of view that Mindstorm does not target children as young as 3-8.

So why you might ask did we decide to use Mindstorm as a basis for the prototype? The answer is simple; Mindstorm provides an extensible environment from which to build effective prototypes, extensible enough to the point of replacing its visual programming tool.

While we identified a good number of issues at our focus group with children ages 3-8 using robots and they’re respective programming environments, for purposes of the prototype we attempted to address only few of the more critical issues that we saw. The goals were to provide enough to a) complete phase IV of the project and b) provide an environment that kids can begin enjoying now.

Issues the prototype was addressing:

• Hardware Abstraction – While children in our target age group tend to understand and able to identify objects such as trains, cars, dolls, and yes even a robot, none of the children that we interacted with in our focus group were familiar with more primitive objects such as gears, motors, and sensors (not to mention that many of those primitive objects are choking hazards;-). Having to deal with primitive hardware objects posed a significant barrier to a child’s success in accomplishing their desired end goal of programming the robot.
• Connectivity – Both of the robot kits we had that had both a hardware and software component had connectivity issues. With Mindstorm in particular children were confused when the robot had automatically turned off and we had to explain to the children that the Bluetooth connection needed to be re-paired. The children moved onto the next robot, while the connection was fixed, but never made it back.
• Layout – Each of the programming environments that the children used in attempting to program the robots had varying levels of complexity, with Mindstorm being the most complex. Children did not understand how the placement of the actions in the program meant different things (e.g. connecting actions made a sequence, while disconnected actions implied parallelism).
• Software Abstraction – Mindstorm in particular had very primitive programming constructs (i.e. actions). If a robot has a claw the child might expect to have a “close claw” and “open claw” actions, however, in Mindstorm for example almost everything is controlled as motor A, B, or C.
• Keyboard Usage – We found that children could play effectively with a visual programming environment such as scratch when the majority of user interactions they performed were done through the mouse. More complex interactions that involved typing with the keyboard acted as a barrier to accomplishing the primary tasks of creating a program.

The following sections will briefly cover what we did with the prototype to overcome these issues:

Hardware Abstraction

To overcome the issue of dealing with primitive hardware objects we are assuming that children are starting off with a complete robot. In the context of Mindstorm this means that the robot has already been built (bypassing a major step). While it would seem quite feasible to imagine that children might still piece together robots using less primitive objects such as a claw piece (which is more of an accessory/attachment for an existing robot rather than a building block), nothing such as that is currently available for Mindstorm and for purposes of the prototype we assume a complete & already accessorized robot.

We started off with:

Mindstorm Out-Of-Box

And have ended up with:

Alpha Rex Finished

Connectivity

We have for the most part eliminated the complexities of connectivity at this point, by not requiring a connection to be configured. Instead, once the user has decided to run their program we dynamically look for the Robot over either USB and/or Bluetooth and upload the resulting program. Preferably we would also have a means of showing the user when one or more robots is detected in the area by polling the Bluetooth connection every few seconds assigning them default user friendly names, however we have not added this feature as of yet.

Below is the Bot-Commander UI which shows the Run button that will be used to find the Mindstorm robot, upload the program (that would be designed on the right hand canvas), and then run it.

Layout

Here we attempted to make the layout as easy as possible. Of course implementing any type of diagramming tool in the relatively short amount of time we had for this phase of the project was challenging. At this point, users can simply drag actions from the left hand pane of the Bot-Commander and drop them onto the design canvas on the right hand side. The difference between our implementation and the visual diagramming environments of the other tools we looked at in the focus group is that sequence is assumed as you drop actions onto the right hand side. Users do not have to visually attempt to snap pieces together or draw edges between actions separately. Instead, they drag and drop, sequence is assumed, and the edges are drawn automatically to reflect the assumed sequence. A major constraint at this point, however is that we do not allow re-ordering without starting from the beginning.

Software Abstraction

Mirroring the hardware primitives, all of the visual programming environments we looked at in the focus group also had software primitives to deal with. Even Scratch, which did not force the use of hardware, but primarily dealt with virtual bots did so at a fairly primitive level (e.g. all “bots” are actually sprite/2d image objects with a fairly limited set of capabilities that are generalized across all sprites). Consider in Scratch if you had a Martian sprite and a gun sprite, to program the Martian to pick up the gun would require telling the sprite to move in the direction of the Gun until a color was detected and then to switch the “costumes” of the sprite to show it holding the gun. Rather we would prefer the programming environment knowing that there was a Martian Robot and that he/she had the capability to pick up a gun and reflect that by making a high-level action called “Pickup Gun” available.

For the purposes of this prototype we are limited to abstracting away the configuration required to do move operations in Mindstorm. Rather than having a single Move action (as is the case in Mindstorm) that requires the user to know what motor they are dealing with, how many revolutions to perform, and in what direction we are summing up this behavior in two separate actions; forward and backward. Bot-Commander assumes the number of revolutions to make the robot step in either direction and even the direction itself is assumed based on the type of robot built (i.e. Alpha Rex).

Keyboard Usage

Currently, everything that can be done in the Bot-Commander can be done via a Mouse. It is our intent to maintain that constraint on the design as much as possible.

Limitations

While we have been successfully in getting the base architecture implemented and addressed some usability concerns, there are a good number of relevant features that we were not able to get to at this point. In particular, we were not able to get to the personalization features which we found to be quite effective for children with both Scratch and Pico Crickets. In addition, we did not have any graphic artists on our project team to create effective images to represent the actions within Bot-Commander. Packaging up the configuration and making an installer for this app would take some extra effort as well since there are platform specific dependencies with respect to USB and bluetooth drivers.

Kudos to MERAPI and LEJOS

At this point I felt obligated to throw some Kudos at the two open sourced projects we used, both greatly accelerated the the rate at which we could work and did as advertised. Its not to often that you use software and it just works. Both Merapi and LEJOS did just that.

Finally!!

Well I was to lazy to do much editing, instead copying and pasting over sections. Just to sum up our work above we ended the project by performing some user & heuristic evaluations, providing us with feedback on the prototype. Unfortunately that aspect was rushed and while useful was not unbiased (i.e. my kids were the only ones to do user evals) That is where the work ended! However, I am hoping to translate this work over to an example within an investigation I am doing on Domain Specific Languages.

References

Here are some references for those interested.

• Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books, A Member of The Perseus Books Group.
• Maddux, C., & Johnson D. (1997) Logo A Retrospective. New York: The Haworth Press, Inc.
• Bers, M. (2008) Blocks to Robots. New York: Teachers College Press
• Druin, A. & Hendler, J. (2000) Robots, Exploring New Technologies for Learning for Kids. California: Academic Press, A Harcourt Science and Technology Company
• Pico Crickets. Montreal, Canada: The Playful Invention Company. http://www.picocricket.com/
• Valient Roamer. IL, US: Valient Technology Ltd. http://www.valiant-technology.com/us/pages/corphome.php?entry=US
• Scratch. Cambridge, MA: The Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. http://scratch.mit.edu/
• Lego Mindstorms. Billund, Denmark: Lego Company. http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/Overview/default.aspx
• Wacky Wigglers. IL, USA: Learning Resources. http://learningresources.com
• Squeak Etoys. http://www.squeakland.org/
• Logo (Programming Language). San Francisco, CA: Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_(programming_language)

Added a few things, improved on a few things.

There is now a front head light, controllable by the NXT “brain”. Using a Dual Longitudinal Subtractor drivetrain powered by two XL Power Functions motor with one Medium Power Functions motor powering the steering mechanism. Drivetrain connected to two Power Function Battery box. (Drivetrain is incomplete, waiting for differential gear box)

Decided against building a rotating turret. Too much work and I’ve too little mechanical knowledge to design such a thing.

Sensors:

HiTechnic Acceleration/Tilt Sensor

HiTechnic IRLink Sensor

HiTechnic EOPD Sensor

HiTechnic Compass Sensor

Weight : 1.8kg

Dimensions: 40cm (Length) x 20cm (Width) x 14cm (Height)

Time to start programming.

More parts have arrived. Now waiting for the final batch of  gears including 2 differential gear box and then work can begin on the engine and the drive train.

I present to you, new and improved, AT-UGV MK II.

Did a test drive with the standard Mindstorm NXT servos and the tracks managed to climb a rather steep angle. About 60 degrees I would say.  Not bad not bad, and mind you this is without all the fancy power gearing.

Building a robot can be quite a huge pain in the ass sometimes especially when you’re not good with fabricating metal parts and welding stuff together. Easy way out, use Lego Technic/Mindstorm NXT.

Anyway here is the preview of the robot I’m working on now. Its still in its infancy, I am just trying out different designs for the chassis. The following track system was conceived after 4 previous failed attempts. It has independent suspension for each wheel and will be powered by Power Functions motor connected to a IR receiver which will, in turn, be linked to the NXT using HiTechnic’s IR Link sensor.

Oh yes, this is only the proof-of-concept model. Going to make it bigger so I have more space to mount more stuff.

Passado o dia da mentira , easter egg day, as piadinhas mentirosas marcantes a data, e o carnaval, começam os posts desse mês.

O twitter é a onda do momento, tá arrebentando, tanto em crescimento, quanto em relevância, e também em alcance. Em fevereiro atingiu a marca de 10 milhões de usuários únicos no site e a cada dia que passa, mais e mais followers no meu http://twitter.com/mitsuto/ — Interessante como apenas um twitt pode trazer novos seguidores (seguidores soa um tanto missionário, mas é a tradução de followers . Eu vejo que o twitter poderá até resolver crimes, dado o correto uso, alguém poderá usar como prova, determinado tweet de algum transeunte que viu um assalto, e twita com foto e localização geo. localizada por GPS utilizando uma tag como {@,#}policiaSPSP para que a polícia já tenha conhecimento do fato e já envie sms para as unidades mais próximas ao fato. Ou outras idéias mirabolantes para algum uso prático na sociedade, deste serviço.

Já no campo da ciência, descobri que o computador mais antigo em funcionamento também é o computador em operação que opera a maior distância do planeta terra, mais de 16 bilhões de quilômetros de distância da Terra [2] — Ainda no campo das missões espaciais, a missão Kepler [4] e Mars Exploration Rover em curso – a missão kepler vai descobrir vida fora do planeta Terra por volta de 2013 (o mundo não vai acabar em 2012(jájá)), e Mars Exploration Rover já está há 5 anos explorando o planeta vermelho [4].

Sobre o futuro, dizem muito sobre 2012. Um irmão acha que é uma jogada de marketing viral mundial para o aumento do consumo global, através de uma não-confirmação da morte geral, ocasionando um baby-boom, que inundará o planeta com googlilhões de bocas a alimentar. Outros acreditam em misticismos e profecias fundamentadas em base vigesimal. Outros são céticos e só conseguem pensar num ciclo universal que afeta o sistema solar a cada 26 milhões de anos. Afinal, esperemos Kepler transmitir dados esclarecedores; em paralelo, acontece o progresso em tecnologias de ordem nanoscópica nos ramos da biologia, engenharia de materiais, farmacologia, engenharias em geral e processos de projetar todas as coisas de maneira sustentável. Utilizar os avanços tecnológicos para realmente livrar dos ombros dos pobres humanos o fardo da labuta cruel a qual é submetido pelo atual sistema financeiro monetário seja-lá-qual-o-nome onde, ao contrário de países onde o direito a vida incondicional é plenamente amparada pelo estado governante.

Eu gosto de pensar {num futuro:democracia,tecnologia,e-democracy.org} onde a tecnologia dominará a maior parte da burocracia da vida na sociedade de consumo. A nós bastará colocarmos os preços devidos a cada tipo de {serviço humano:buscar por distinção do trabalho de classes} e trabalharmos poucas horas por dia, ganhando dignamente um retorno financeiro que permita total desenvolvimento do potencial humano saudável que busca pelo conhecimento. Fábricas robotizadas e maneiras sustentáveis de obtenção de energias renováveis já {estão a caminho:john thackara}. Com o conhecimento que possuimos hoje podemos mudar o mundo a favor do ser humano, evitando credos retrógrados e ancientais e parados no tempo e obtusos a realidade e a condição da raça humana, podemos criar formas {utópicas:AGI, ia} baseadas em tecnologia da informação e do conhecimento, para resolver problemas de ordem social, civil, e democrática. #prontofalei

Norfolk, Virginia -- Hampton Roads

Well, the Gryphon and I are back from Hampton Roads.  As many of you know Gryphon recently underwent open-heart surgery (he sure did whine enough about it in here, anyway), and his 78 year old mother came up to Charlottesville, Virginia from Hampton, VA to look after him during his recuperation.  She was here one month.

Gryphon and I grew up together and every time he landed in jail, I was more than a friend to him.  A friend is a person who, when you go to jail, he comes down to bail you out.  I was more than that.  Whenever the Gryph landed in the calaboose I was there sitting next to him on the bench saying, “MAN!  Was that fun or WHAT?”

We went to all the same schools together and I was the who one helped him out in both of his marriages.  If it wasn’t for me, he might have actually stayed married to one or the other of those broads.  I am proud to say that it was my influence that saved him from both of those disasters.  His wives might say that I was the cause of the problems in the first place, but who’re you going to believe, them or me?  Huh?

As for my credentials, you might ask,

is this yahoo really a doctor?

Well, you might ask, but that doesn’t mean that I am going to give you a straight answer.  I’ll leave it at this–I play one on the Internet.

As for what I do here in the Aerie–a lot.  Most of the serious stuff here is my work.  The difference between the founding

Mindstorm

of this blog and now is that up until now that lovable buffoon Gryphon has been taking credit for my writing.  But I showed his ass.  He got an invitation to be a guest author from Jamesesz over at Mindstorm, but  I hacked into Gryph’s email and stole his invitation.  Now, I am an author with my own byline over at Mindstorm.  As a matter of fact my most recent post over there is Establishing a Baseline.  You can also find it here in the Aerie.

I didn’t tell Whistle-Dick that I was going to Mindstorm.  I just went ahead and did it.  He found out about it and did a post here announcing it, Broken Leash, comparing me to a DOG in the process!

Well, that cut it for me.  We got in a real big argument and I threatened to stop writing for the Aerie altogether and go over to Mindstoem exclusively where I was OBVIOUSLY more appreciated and better respected.  He changed his tune real fast when he saw that I was serious.  He not only agreed to list me as an official contributor/author and change the bylines on posts I have done here retroactively, but he also replaced the ratty rug with a store-bought doggie bed–the Saint Bernard size!    I was pleased and told him I would stay.

Proof that the Doc don't look half bad when you clean him up.

Right now the poor guy is sleeping like the dead.  Today’s trip really took a toll on him.

I have a couple of posts I am going to do for the Aerie this weekend.  One will be the conclusion for MY series on The End of History and the Last Man (see Series page).  I also have a news story and commentary on the recent repression of Human Rights activists in Russia.  If he posts anything it’ll probably be one his silly little jokes that he thinks are so hilarious.  Humor him for me, please.  Chuckle politely.  His ego is fragile.

Before I sign this one off, let me address one last thing.  There is speculation that Dr. Spots and Gryphon are actually one and the same person.  There have been comments that C.E. Spots is actually a pseudonym or nom de plume. which if true would be kinda strange when you consider that “Gryphon” is actually a pseudonym for some other guy named Michael and if Dr. Spots is a pseudonym for Gryphon then it would be a pseudonym for a pseudonym, which would be ridiculous, don’t ya think?  Huh?

So am I him or is he me?  The only thing that I will confirm is that, truly,

I am the Walrus

c. e. spots

Doctor Spots has jumped the fence.  I found him over at Mindstorm writing under his own byline.  He has a post over there called The Doctor Is In.

How do you like THAT?  You take a defrocked doctor in, clean him up, get him off the sauce, let him have the scraps from your very own table, give him a nice clean (if slightly ratty) rug by the back door on which to sleep and then he goes and betrays you like this!  And by “you” I mean “me” of course–sheesh.

I have been invited to be a guest contributor at a blog at the site.  We are still going through some technical difficulties getting the site to recognize me as an already active blogger.  As soon as that mess is cleared up we should be ready to roll.

The Blog is called Mindstorm.

It is linked here and in Word Press Blogs I Like.

And They Thank You For Your Support.

G.

Look at this video of a Turing Machine built with the LEGO Mindstorm platform:

This is a part of a project at computer science of Aarhus University in Denmark. At this page you can find the official blog of the project where you can follow the step-by-step development of the robotic Turing Machine.

Turing Machines were described by Alan Mathinson Turing in 1936: they are a simple way to describe the logic of any computer algorithm. Despite their simplicity they are useful to describe and understand the limits of mechanical computation.

A Turing Machine consists in:

• a tape arbitrarily expandable to the left and to the right, divided into adiacent cell containg a symbol;
• a head wich can move in any direction over the tape and can read and/or write symbols on it;
• a set of transition functions that describe how the machine operates;
• a state wich describes the current status of the machine.

For more information about the Turing Machine you can visit this page on Wikipedia.

Då jag förra veckan hade Darkstep-tema med grupper/artister som jag gillar lägger jag i detta inlägg upp länkar till deras myspace sidor samt några andra som inte spelades upp.

Bad Company
Black Sun Empire
Bulletproof
C9H13NO3 aka ADRENALINE
Calyx
Concord Dawn
Dieselboy x Human Imprint
Mindstorm
Noisia
Robyn Chaos
Teebee
Tech Itch
Telematrik

Lego Robot

A complete review of the Lego Robot Lego Mindstorms NXT. Probably the most amazing scientific toy ever!

Lego Robot Mindstorms NXT combines the power of the LEGO building system, an intelligent brick and easy-to-use drag-and-drop programming software to create advanced robots. Create and build the smartest, most advanced LEGO robot yet, in as few as 30 minutes. The new NXT Intelligent Brick, your robot’’s “brain,” features a powerful 32-bit microprocessor and more memory, plus support for USB 2.L

LEGO Mindstorms NXT
Order This Years
Hot Item Lego Robot Here

EGO’s newest robot-building kit, with greatly improved functionality
* 32-bit command center with large LCD, USB 2.0 and Bluetooth interfaces that allow robots to walk, talk and interact with their environment
* Technic blocks (“studless legos”) create a more human, less boxy look
* Intuitive GUI and drag-and-drop icons are PC- and Mac-friendly
* Redesigned touch and light sensors, new sound sensor and ultrasonic sensor
* Now with three motors redesigned for smoother, more reliable operation
* 6-wire digital cables for more precise connections
* 5 main themes (8 different models) Vehicle: Roverbot, Animal, Scorpio; Machine: Robotic Arm; Human: Humanoid; Gadgets: Clock, Music, Game and Movers
* Models are all built within the LEGO Technic System

Includes:

* 577 pieces
* Quickstart Guide helps you build a robot ready for action within 30 minutes
* Model-specific building instructions, tips and tricks, testing methods and programming options
* Easy-to-use software
* Test panel

The power of the LEGO building system, an intelligent command center and easy-to-use, drag and drop programming software unleash the power of your robot-building imagination.

Lego Robot Mindstorms NXT combines creativity and computer programming into a great set for the Lego enthusiast. It is expensive but pays for itself in the many hours of constructive play.
Do not buy if your child is not great at building the basic set by him/herself or you will need to help.
We spent a lot of money on Lego sets that my son put together quickly and then he was finished playing with the set. At least this toy keeps his interest.

I am buying an NXT for my 11 year old son who has been begging for one for awhile. He is a member of the Robotics team at his elementary school (his 3rd year) and so he interacts with these every day, but wants one of his own to play around with at home.

For those of you whose children are or may be interested in science/engineering/robotics, etc. or are just looking for something creative to do, there is a worldwide program out there that they can join to help develop these skills and have fun at the same

time! Lego created this program about 15 years ago and it is now worldwide. Go to [...] to learn all about it. The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Program is absolutely wonderful. They start out at age 6, with the Junior FIRST Lego League (JFLL); 9-14 yr olds. [or about 3-8th graders] compete in the FIRST Lego League (FLL), using the NXT or RCX (older model) robots; and when they hit high school, they begin building real, actual working Lego Robot to compete with.

If your school does not have a team, look into starting one (anyone can: schools, churches, boy/girl scout troops, community organizations, whatever). The fees are not much after the initial kit cost (around $600, which includes the robot and all tournament supplies) and often you can find sponsors to cover some, if not all, of the fees. The kids do not just play with robots, they also work very hard on a research project which they present to a panel of judges at each tournament (there is usually a tourney for city, region, state, national, and then international if your team qualifies for each next tournament), and there are awards for many things: robot competitions, teamwork, research, robot design, team spirit, overall score, etc. If you are looking for a great extracurricular for your gifted or creative child, this is it!

Ibuilt my first robot out of a cardboard box (I was inside) and, at the time that was pretty much the same way they did it on TV and in the movies. We’ve come a long way since then!

My entry point to the NXT robotic platform was in search of a faster, easier way of implementing remote sensing and data accumulation. I had been working with Crossbow motes, but found their “programming” tedious and non-intuitive. I checked out LabView first ($1,000 for the base level) and figured that for a quarter of that price I would get a taste of the software plus ready-to-use sensors and servomotors. I was pleased beyond my most optimistic expectations!

I won’t repeat the other reviews other than to say that the first “rover” was done in less than 30 minutes (once I figured out that its parts were in the smaller box labeled “open me first”) and I am a long way from being a Lego wizard.

What I want to do is clear up some of the confusion that might result from reading other reviewers’ remarks about the software: for its intended purpose, the LabView “lite” is perfect. And what is that purpose, you might wonder: to enable kids ages 8+ to actually write robotics code, take measurements and control motion.

In contrast to “left-brained” logic with typed instructions (e.g. C/C++, BASIC, etc.) this is “right-brained” symbolic, intuitive programming. You don’t have to write code for a “do loop”, just drag a “loop block” and it will “do” what is needed. Variables? Just drag a “wire” from block to block and the data will be where you need it. Interrupts? You can have multiple threads and each can be waiting for specific data and react when it appears. Debug? Okay, it’s trial and error, but the trials are short and the errors easy to fix.

As for execution speed of the compiler, I tried it on both a Mac and a PC (both about 1GHz and latest software, etc.) and found the PC to be significantly slower and quirkier but still very easy to use. (note: the install on my PC was a real pain, but trivial on the Mac)

Now for the good (read “geek”) part: the Lego folks are making the SDK’s for the processor and the Bluetooth interface available soon and there are alternative ways to create programs for the brick even now using C/C++ like instructions. The processor is ARM-based (it’s everywhere, it’s everywhere!) so writing assembler is not out of the question as there are plenty of tools available.

BUT! Don’t fault Lego for not making kids learn assembler or C++ or for not making the memory 1GB rather than 256K. It’s a toy!

Yeah right, a way cool toy. . ..

LEGO Mindstorms NXT
Order This YearsHot Item
Lego Robot Here

Navegando por Internet me encontré con una caja fuerte mucho más segura de las que ahora existen, y creada con ….. legos !? Esta caja fuerte esta hecha con piezas de Mindstorm de LEGO, para abrir la caja de seguridad necesitas insertar una contraseña de 5 cifras en una pantalla con números que cambian al girar una rueda, con la que se alcanzan cerca de 305 billones de combinaciones. Una de las mejores cosas anti-robo de esta caja fuerte es un detector de movimiento, que si mueves la caja empezara a sonar una alarma. Cada vez me impresionan mas las cosas que se pueden crear con las piezas Mindstorm de LEGO.

I was trying to install leJOS to my Lego minstorm brick. I used ubuntu and got into trouble when I tried to flash the lego brick. I realized that the problem is that I didn’t have write permission to usb device. If I used sudo, I didn’t know how to export the environment variable NXJ_HOME.

I tried sudo export NXJ_HOME=~/lejos_nxj but it didn’t work. It turns out the solution is easy. What I need is simply

sudo -s

If you read my earlier blog you may have not understood the term “Black hat hacker”

Now you are only really likely to see this term unless you are looking at things that proper hackers have said, perhaps on blogs, or perhaps it is something to do with linux or unix, or a opensource piece of software. the term cracker is little more well known, though the term “hacker” is very well know.

Hacker: someone who breaks into a system for illegal activities and blah-dey blah-dy blaaaaaaaaaaahhhh.

This IS NOT A TRUE DEFINITION OF HACKER. A hacker by this definition is a thing fabricated by the media that has become something bad, and evil, whereas a hacker originally was someone who would help people. Help people by making programs for them to help, practically the entire first linux operating system was created by hackers, people using the operating system, finding things that didnt work or they didnt like, so they made it better. Hackers are the purest, nicest hackers ever to really exist, they practically programmed for the fun of it. And I must admit programming is fun.

If you want to learn how to program, you could use a bad, but easy language like visual basic, or you could use something like java, it has hundreds of tutorials on the internet, and it is absolutley free, thats right, you wouldnt even have to download a dodgey copy! I think anybody starting out with programming should try something easy, the first program you ever write with a new language is a Hello World! program. But if you want to have lots of fun with java, get sum lego, and a Lego NXT brick, then just download the software to start running lejos, which is java for the lego robots. Watch some of the great videos on youtube:

http://uk.youtube.com/results?search_query=lego+nxt+mindstorm&search_type=&aq=1&oq=lego+nxt+minds

Como parte de las actividades del curso de Inteligencia Artificial se ha propuesto la mejora de proyectos que fueron realizados el semestre pasado, utilizando el set de Legos Mindstorm.

El primer contacto con estos robots, pues en mi persona fue ver una caja gris con una especie de carrito dentro, y un monton de piezas sueltas, y la conseguida de 6 baterias 2A para poder probar el funcionamiento del robot.

Antes que todo, pues me dio curiosidad ver cuales eran las piezas que “sobraban” y pues si quedaba buena cantidad, por lo que aun me queda la curiosidad sobre que otros robots se podran armar. Las piezas que quedaba y el robot se pueden ver en la siguiente fotografia.

Despues de esto pues era hora de ponerle baterias y ver que era capaz de hacer el robotito, ya que simpatico si se miraba. El robot tenia conectado un sensor sonico (si no estoy mal), un sensor infrarrojo y un sensor de choque, como partes mas relevantes, se desplazaba impulsado por dos motores y se movilizaba sobre tres llantas.

Despues de aproximadamente 5 minutos de haber aprendido como manejar el control del robot, pues empece a buscar si tenia algun programa cargado, y resulto que no, unicamente tenia los programas de prueba que trae por definicion, asi que correspondia ponerlo en su alfombra y ver que era lo que hacia. En esto fueron otros 10 minutos para comprender como hiciera algo, y la final pues fue interesante, ya que este programa de prueba, era para probrar el infrarojo.

Lo que hice fue lo siguiente: para empezar lo puse en el area de Start que viene indicada en la alfombra y darle play. Al darle play el robot avanzaba hasta encontrar el borde negro, en ese punto daba un giro de 180 grados y regresaba hasta encontrar el siguiente borde negro, en ese punto volvia a girar y avanzaba un poco y se quedaba parado. Pueden ver el video de la prueba aqui.

Y asi es como despues de 18 años, volvi a tener en mis manos los famosos Legos, no los que yo conoci, pero no importa, porque estos parecen ser mas entretenidos.

Selbstverstümmelung rockt! Jap, genau so sieht’s aus.
Ich hab in den letzten Tagen mal wieder einige Games für den DS angezockt und da kam mir die Idee, doch mal zu schreiben, was so bisher die größte Grütze war, die ich zocken “durfte”. Jep, ich oute mich, auch ich zocke mal Crap. Ich beschränk mich da auch mal auf die Nintendo-Fraktion, sprich: DS, GameCube und Wii.

Den Anfang mach ich mal mit Pokémon Channel für den GameCube. Ja, omg, ich hab es mal gezockt! Ich war jung, ich war verwirrt, ich wusste nicht was ich tat. Verzeiht mir!
Ich frage mich heute noch, wer auf die Idee gekommen ist, solch ein Spiel zu entwickeln. Man sollte denjenigen vierteilen, verbrennen und an die Schweine verfüttern. Ein Spiel, in dem man TV gucken kann… von und mit Pokémon. Grandiose Sache.

Am vergangenen Wochenende habe ich dann mal Animal Genius für den DS gespielt. Niemals kam ich mir so minderwertig vor. Ich habe mich gefühlt wie ein Geistigbehinderter, dem man die einfachsten Dinge 290338328 mal erklären muss. Nicht nur, dass die Sprecher so klingen als wären sie soeben aus einer Geschlossenen entlaufen und laufen jeden Moment Amok, nein, auch die Spiele selbst sind auf Lego-Duplo Niveau. “Wähle das Tier, das du sein möchtest!” *Stinktier auswähl* “Du bist ein Stinktier!” Danke Spiel, danke Entwickler, mich selbst minderwertig machen kann ich selbst auch ganz gut, dafür brauch ich keine Software namens Animal Genius.

Was ich an dem Tag auch noch angezockt habe, war Mindstorm, etwas aus der DS-Casual-Gehirn-Jogging-Fraktion. Ich möchte ja behaupten, die beiden Kawashima Games sind gut, und auch Mathe- sowie Augentraining sind noch ganz interessant, aber Mindstorm ist so ein verdammt schlechter Abklatsch, dass ich noch mehr Hass auf solche Games schiebe als ich es eh schon tat. Diese hirnfordernden Spiele sind so hirnfordernd, dass ich fast eingeschlafen bin. Sie waren so anspruchsvoll, dass selbst Kindergartenkinder sich gelangweilt hätten. Ich will sagen, gibt für sowas wirklich jemand Geld aus? Gibt es Leute, die sowas mögen können? Wenn ja, bitte terminieren. So jemanden möchte ich niemals nie nicht treffen…

Komm ich mal zur ZOMG NEXT GENERATION Wii. Dafür besitze ich FarCry Vengeance. FarCry auf dem PC war ja ein grafisch sehr nett anzusehendes Game und auch spielerisch konnte es überzeugen. Wie, also wirklich WIE kann man aus so etwas nur ein dermaßen verkommenes, schlechtes, verdorbenes Scheißspiel machen. STIRB, UBISOFT, STIRB!
Alleine diese Texturen… ich möchte sie ausdrucken und die Entwickler damit bewusstlos schlagen. Die Schatten sind aber besonders interessant, das könnte sogar als Feature durchgehen oder sogar Retro-Tetris-Gefühle wecken. Wenn man wollte, könnte man dort die Pixel zählen.
Viel schlimmer als diese verkommene Grafik ist aber die grausame KI. Gegner die fröhlich gegen Wände, Bäume u.ä. laufen, dabei nicht merken, dass man diese Dinge weder verschieben noch durch sie hindurchrennen kann. Zu allem Überfluss haben die eine Reaktion wie ich nach 50 Schlaftabletten. Da rennt man an den Spinnern vorbei und es dauert, bis sie realisieren “Oh, Feind. Waffe laden. Feind tot… machen!!”. Scheiße nur, wenn ich die dann längst mit Blei vollgepumpt habe. Da komm ich auch mal direkt zum nächsten Punkt: die saumäßige Steuerung.  Wie kann man nicht merken, dass der Cursor einfach mal gen Bildschirmrand springt. Waren die Tester blind? Qualicheck gibt es nicht? Jeder, der das Game besitzt und zockt, hat mein Beileid. Allerdings alle, die sogar noch Spaß an so einem Stück Müll haben, nicht.

Ebenfalls für Wii: Call of Duty 3. Nachdem mich CoD 4 auf dem PC wirklich in seinen Bann gezogen hat, wollte ich auch den 3. mal zocken. Na gut, eigentlich schon vorher, aber da hatte ich ihn noch nicht. Ich bereue es, ich bereue es sehr. Einfach scheiße.

Zu guter letzt komm ich dann zu einem Game, das ich schon seit langer Zeit haben wollte, sich aber als totaler Crap rausstellte. Mystic Heroes für den GameCube. Das Schlimmste daran sind eindeutig dieses abgefuckten deutschen Stimmen, die sich absolut unschön anhören… Bei dem Game kommt einfach kein Spaß auf… Die irgendwie zähe Steuerung trägt ihren Teil dazu bei. Aber woran es genau liegt, kann ich nicht sagen. Es ist einfach schlecht – insgesamt. Dass es ein Dynasty Warriors Abklatsch ist, ist aber eh klar. Allerdings macht Dynasty Warriors wesentlich mehr Spaß.

Gab noch einige mehr, aber ich wollte hier nur mal die schlechtesten, in letzter Zeit von mir gespielten Games aufzählen (Pokémon Channel ist die Ausnahme, das hab ich vor zig Jahren gezockt…). Auch da waren mehr dabei (Pet Alien, Jagdfieber, Contact, Arthur und die Minimoys, Happy Feet, etc. pp.), aber diese hier sind quasi die Crap de la Crap.
Nun denn, genug geheult und vielleicht konnte ich den ein oder anderen vor einem üblen Fehlkauf bewahren.