The Mythbusters Construct a Kit Bot

A reader wrote in to mention a writeup of a really great Mythbusters project. Hyneman, Savage, and Imahara went out and purchased a 'Vex' robot kit from RadioShack, and constructed the bot to see what it was like. They were pleasantly surprised. From the article: "Jamie Hyneman: I must admit I was expecting to turn up my nose at a do-it yourself robotics kit from Radio Shack. But guess what? The VEX System kicks butt. In a total of about 12 person-hours, Adam Savage and Grant Imahara (my cohosts on MythBusters) and I were able to build a functional, if somewhat basic, prototype equivalent of an iRobot's PackBot."

Vex Robot stuff is 50%off at Radio Shack

http://www.radioshack.com/search/index.jsp?kwCatId =&kw=vex [radioshack.com]

Radio Shack is going to be selling a ton of them

Good break for Radio Shack, you can't pay for that kind of advertising.

Re:Radio Shack is going to be selling a ton of the

Or else they actually did pay for them to do just that.

You have to understand that Radio Shack is teetering on the edge of self-destruction due to piss poor management tactics and poor product placement.
They are shuttering between 400-700 corporate stores

Re:Radio Shack is going to be selling a ton of the

and reevaulating where they stand on what products they need to be pushing.

That's good. My local Radio Shack only sells 40-conductor IDE ribbon cables, not the 80-conductor kind that's been required for like the last 5 years.

Re:Radio Shack is going to be selling a ton of the

Erm, yes they can. It's called product placement. If you see a person drinking Pepsi in a movie, do you think that's a coincidence? No, it's someone only job to contact companies and ask for money. Favorite targets are cars, beverages, guns (USA), fast foo

Re:Radio Shack is going to be selling a ton of the

Like if we're idiots with the memory span of a goldfish.

Now, now... they busted that one, remember? (the goldfish memory - the jury's still out on the idiots part ;p )

Person Hours?

They actually said "person hours?"

Re:Person Hours?

In TFA, Jamie Hyneman is said to have used the words "person-hours" in a sentence. The term is totally appropriate and it is not out of character for him from what I have seen on his television program.

A person hour is a measurement of effort. One person who works for one hour will have performed one person hour worth of work. This measure is often abbreviated as PH. http://www.spc.ca/resources/metrics/glossary.htm [www.spc.ca]

This information was obtained by reading TFA (I searched for "hours" in the page) and by googling for "define person hours".

Re:Person Hours?

Sounds very similar to what we normally refer to as "man hours" when we are not trying to bend over backwards to appease the goddesses of political correctness. ;-)

man hour [wikipedia.org]

Re:Person Hours?

Similar, but not identical.

You gotta figure one man-hour is about equal to two woman-hours. So that means 1 man-hour is approximately 1.5 person-hours. Of course these figures are a very rough sort of average. The actual time it takes to complete a project varies widely depending on which individuals are involved, and it often will not scale in a linear way with number of participants.

Re:Person Hours?

Political correctness is bad enough, political correctness without thinking about it is downright scary. George Carlin said it best:

"I think mankind ought to be human kind, but they take it too far, they take themselves too seriously, they exaggerate. The

Re:Person Hours?

I love mythbusters too, but if you really think Kari and Scotti are hot, you gotta get out more. They're not ugly, average sure, but far from a "hottie" classification.

Re:Person Hours?

I love mythbusters too, but if you really think Kari and Scotti are hot, you gotta get out more. They're not ugly, average sure, but far from a "hottie" classification.

Are you kidding me? Kari has that whole Earth-mother, freaky San Fran chick action going on, and Scottie is a tatooed hippy chick who can weld and build stuff.

Hell, in some of her outfits, Kari looks like a friggin' Anime character, and in a bikini she's amazing -- she's hot like Willow was hot.

We're talking two protypical geek-girls if I've ever seen 'em. Except they're artists and techicians.

Are they the protypical fashion hottie? Nope. Does the total package of coolness transcend all of that? Absolutely. They're hot in a counter-culture way that's way better than what Vogue tells us is hot. Like I said, tank girl not fashion model.

But, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So your mileage may vary.

Re:Person Hours?

"she's hot like Willow was hot."

Erm, I'm into midget porn as much as the next guy, but Willow...?

Re:Person Hours?

They actually said "person hours?"

Of course: it's a more specific term to differentiate from something like "robot-hours" or "woman-hours."

Re:Person Hours?

I just had to do the accounting of an EC project in PM. That's person month - of course, there's no clear definition anywhere of how many PH there are in one PM.

Science fair projects?

I know my son will love this (OK, me too). He has been asking me to get him a robot kit. But I'll probably have to get two kits so I don't take over his project :-)

Then robot wars!

Oh, yeah: I for one welcome our robotic overlords...

Re:Science fair projects?

I know my son will love this (OK, me too). He has been asking me to get him a robot kit. But I'll probably have to get two kits so I don't take over his project :-)

Of course, once you've got two, then you'll need a third so you cannibilize more parts without taking apart his science-fair project. But then he's gonna want another one so he can get a better grade 'cuase little Billy is making a robot too. Then it'll get totally out of hand.

Then, soon you'll have a houseful of robots doing all manner of silly things. Stop yourself before it's too late, you're playing into their hands and creating our own overlords!

Run. Run for your lives ... must resist shiny robot mind-control technology ... must resist temptation to go to Radio Shack ...

Stairs

Adam Savage: Our goal was to see if we could get it to climb stairs. As far as I know, there are few (if any) toys that will climb stairs; and only a few high-end robots like the PackBot and the humanoid Honda robots that can perform this task.

I guess climbing downstairs doesn't count? [wikipedia.org] :-)

it's FIRST, Radio Shack is the front...

There was a mini-FIRST made of VEX robots this year. We saw the demo at FRC Hartford last week. Very impressive, makes it more accessible to middle schoolers and they "play" with it less than Mindstorms. The electronics comes from Innovation FIRST, the folks who make the brains for the FIRST robotics teams, and they're also VEXLabs. We're using it for the Trinity College Firefighting Robotics Contest, and we've gotten a chassis built and running under program control and effectors prototyped in record time.

One thing better than Mindstorms is that you can more easily add other materials, parts etc., and make it more bombproof without resorting to toxic adhesives or plastic-eating tools...

We're still wondering why RS is having a fire sale - two local stores were cleaned out as of Friday night - we just loaded up the last ultrasound and light sensors we could find. Some have said they're just dropping the retail line at RS, some have said it's just a sale, an eMail to the edu & gov rep at RS Fort Worth is yet unanswered. VEXLabs is still selling at full price. Hope they're just switching horses, but with RS no longer selling electronic parts, this was the sweetest thing they'd had in a while.

Two heads-ups: the pushbutton inputs use negative logic (thanks, VEX - that was a half hour of "stump the chumps"...) - and there is no "run" switch on the bot - programs (and the wheels they control) run once they complete the download - so either mold some tiny cinder blocks or grab an extra bumper button (or other sensor) and create a latch as the first step in the program...

Open Source Robotics?

Could this be the start of mainstream Open Source robotics? I know this isn't the first DIY robot kit, nor will it be the last but if this really catches on I could see an open source community developing around it.

Also, I can definately see people developing their own components for these things. Paying $9.99 for a phototransistor is a little ridiculous if you know how to set one up on your own.

I don't get it

What myth are they busting here, exactly? That everything from RadioShack sucks?

I used this for a robotics class at my college...

My robotics class here at school used a few Vex kits and accessories to build robots. We came out with three cool robots that all were quite successful in 3 weeks. Check out pictures here:

http://flickr.com/photos/yellowbkpk/tags/vex/ [flickr.com]

Also, we spent a lot of time making custom sensors and modifying the ones that Vex gave us. They are all very easy to get in to and examine (like this one [flickr.com]) and interface with (like the switch debouncer [flickr.com] that I made). Although the metal parts are just a little "different" then everything else, meaning you have to machine or buy new pieces, some Lego pieces will mesh with the Vex pieces quite nicely (as in this home-made shaft encoder [flickr.com]).

Um, cool -- but...

...aren't Jamie and Grant already quite knowledgeable about robotics? I mean, Grant has experience in competitive robotics, and Jamie built that soda-can-shooting, remote-controlled vending machine. Not exactly your typical RS customers.
That said, I am looking forward to seeing them build the kit...

Vex IS a robot (from TFA)

From TFA 'Also available is a programming module that will allow you to hook your robot up to a computer and download a program for adding autonomous capabilities.'