Announcements
February 2024 Meeting
Our January meeting will be held on Wednesday the 21st at 5:00 PM in person at River City Labs and online via Google Meet. Visitors are welcome to attend in person or online. If you want to attend online, contact Bruce at president@circpeoria.org to get an invite. Standard meeting format will be followed: 1) Show and Tell; 2) Tech Talk- A Look at Humanoid Robots 2024; 3) Planning and Business followed by socializing. Thank you River City Labs for allowing us to meet in your maker space.
February 10, 2024 at 3:20 pm | Announcements, Monthly Meeting Recaps | No comment
Announcing Bot Boogaloo 2024
Central Illinois Robotics Club [CIRC] will be hosting their Bot Boogaloo 2024 on Saturday, October 19, 2024. Start time will be 10:00 AM. The end time will be determined by the number of contestants. The location will be at the clubhouse for Izaak Walton Lake, Metamora, IL.
All the events are autonomous unless indicated otherwise. Rules are available for each event via the links below. If the event does not have a link, the rules have not been finalized yet and will be finalized at the competition.
Mail-in entries will be accepted. Live streaming of all events is planned.
If you have questions or suggestions, email president@circpeoria.org.
Registration will be the day of or in advance. If you plan on competing, please let us know at the email above so we can plan appropriately.
After the competitions, we will have a Build Session where people work on their projects as they see fit. The Build Sessions are very informal and fun.
Events planned are:
-
Line
-
Sumo
-
Way Point
-
Lawn Mowing
-
RC Drone competition
Demonstrations possible:
-
ROxX
-
Hockey Sumo
- Line Racing
-
Wall Maze (simple)
-
Inverted Pendulum
February 10, 2024 at 2:54 pm | Announcements, Brawls & Boogaloos | No comment
January Challenge on Sunday 28, 2024
UPDATE: Location changed to Tom’s house in Peoria, IL. If you would like to attend, email president@circpeoria.org.
ORIGINAL: We will be hosting a Challenge on Sunday, January 28th. A Challenge is an informal competition and Build Session all in one. We’ll be competing against each other in an informal manner, working on our bots, and collaborating. One can think of it as a day to build robots and see how well they work. The events we’ll be focusing on this time are Line Follow, Line Maze, Mini Sumo, Cone Stalking, and Drone Racing. Registration is not required. There are no prizes. Anyone is welcome to attend. You can bring a hobby bot or not. Questions are welcomed. We’ll start at 10 AM and stop sometime in the late afternoon. There is no schedule of events. Note: If you have some other bot you want to bring, work on, test, or talk about, then bring it with you. We don’t mind being distracted. If you have questions, contact president@circpeoria.org
SUMMARY: The first Challenge & Build Session went well. We dusted off some of our bots that had not been used in a while, sometimes years, and set to figuring out their needs and capabilities. More than one battery was found to be corroded and all hope those bots are not destroyed. We had some very casual contests and discussed methods to make improvements. In between these Challenges, much building and testing went on with the sharing of expertise.
-
Line Follow – Mike, Matt and Bruce were able to get their line followers functioning. Bruce had installed faster motors in his Zumo and was able to produce times that were about half of its previous times. This time, about 12 seconds, was close to Matt’s time with his 3pi. Mike’s self made bot was faster than both by about 5 seconds. We didn’t worry about exact times.
-
Line Maze – Matt’s 3pi was able to solve the Line Maze course in a admirable manner, though we did not time it. The struggle for the bot was finding nodes that were not there. We weren’t sure what was causing this, but guessed that it was seeing lines on the course laying under the mat or was thrown off by ripples in the course surface. After removing perceived problems, the bot completed the course.
-
Cone Stalker – Matt and Karl were able to get their bots to touch the 3 cones. Both bots were given the way points and moved to the cones following a self derived course that avoided cardboard boxes used as obstacles.
-
Robomagellan – Davide brought the club Robomagellan bot, Wheel-E, and shared his understanding and plans for the lovable bot. After having it for only a couple of weeks, his model in Gazebo is nearly ready to test the operating system. Karl was able to spend a lot of time with Davide to explain different details of the Wheel-E operating system.
All in all, the Challenge & Build Session was a success.
January 21, 2024 at 12:58 pm | Announcements, Competitions | No comment
Bot Brawl 2020 is Canceled
Sorry to announce, but we have canceled Bot Brawl 2020 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. We hope to see you in 2021.
June 3, 2020 at 8:07 pm | Announcements, Brawls & Boogaloos | No comment
Harper Experience Day Bot Brawl 19
CIRC hosted their second Bot Brawl of the year! Harper Experience Day Bot Brawl 19 was held on Saturday, October 5, 2019 at Harper College in Palatine, IL. We were located in the cafeteria located on the first floor of building A. This event was held as part of Harper Experience Day and Harper Maker Fest. This was the first time that CIRC hosted a Bot Brawl as a part of these events and it was a great time for all. There were maker demonstrations and maker exhibits going on all day long in addition to the Bot Brawl.
The only event with an award was Antweight (1 lb) RC Combat. We also had fun and exhibition matches based on what contestants brought.
Rules: RC Combat Rules
Competition Schedule:
Combat Results: We ran a round robin bracket where robots were scored 1 for a win, 0 for a loss, and 0.5 for a tie. Ties were decided by the judges. For the rumble, Shenzou was the last robot standing. Great job everyone.
August 28, 2019 at 1:11 pm | Announcements, Brawls & Boogaloos | No comment
Monthly Meeting Recap 1/10/2018
Meeting notes from the first meeting of 2018.
- Attendees:
- Peter
- Karl
- Bruce Stott
- Mike
- Manish – New member
- Show & Tell:
- Peter had several items:
- He recommended checking out the LG robot fails at CES 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQMtbWwbduA
- He received a communication from Jsumo regarding their latest product, the Xmotion robot controller on indiegogo. This is an arduino-compatible controller with integrated high-current H-bridges. Good for sumo and other small robots. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/xmotion-all-in-one-controller-for-robotics-robot-arduino#/
- He reported that he installed ROS2 on Windows. Basically it works, but is arduous to install and limited compared with ROS for Linux.
- He brought a 3d-printed container that opens only after being manipulated to solve a maze. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:201097
- He brought a book he recently read called Invent It, Sell It, Bank It! by Lori Greiner from Shark Tank. It reminded him that he prefers product design over sales/marketing/business.
- Karl had made much progress on Wheel-E, which he demonstrated.
- He had the Leddar mounted and communicating over CAN with the Raspberry Pi.
- He had dead reckoning functioning based on encoders and a yaw rate gyro.
- He drove Wheel-E around, showing the Leddar point cloud in Rviz. It could show Wheel-E moving in a fixed frame of reference (based on position from dead reckoning), or show Wheel-E as stationary and the point cloud moving around.
- He demonstrated startup of the ROS system, which involves many steps in a particular order. During the meeting he created a launch file that automated some of the steps.
- Here is a link to videos of the robot driving around and its Leddar output displayed on a laptop.
- Mike showed some 3d-printed filament cleaners/oilers that he printed to use up a couple meters of filament at the end of a spool. The interesting thing about them is that they are a hinged box with clasp that print as a single piece. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1692395
- Peter had several items:
- Presentation:
- We ended up talking a lot about Wheel-E, so we saved the technical talk till next time.
January 18, 2018 at 9:14 pm | Announcements, Monthly Meeting Recaps | No comment
12th Annual UNI Mini-Sumo Smackdown Competition
The organizers of the UNI MiniSumo Smackdown invite you to compete in their mini sumo competition to be held on Friday, April 21, 2017 from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM at the University of Northern Iowa. The unique nature of this contest is that competitors can mail their robot entrants to the organizers and they will assign someone to operate the robot as per the owner’s instructions. Pretty cool, you don’t have to even be there, which is nice on the budget. The only downside is that the owner does not get to see their robot cream the competition. Another upside is that the owner does not get to see their robot get creamed by the competition. I guess it depends on how you look at it. ?
Here is a link to the site with the announcement.
February 21, 2017 at 1:11 pm | Announcements, Competitions | No comment
Josh Jacob’s Meccatana Project – G15B
Josh is working on a humanoid type of robot. He has a lot going into this creation of his. He is merging Meccano’s Meccanoid G15 Robot with Microsoft’s Cortana AI and Intel RealSense. Here is a link his web page for this project.
February 21, 2017 at 11:59 am | Announcements, Projects | No comment
Peoria Riverfront Museum Engineering Day – 2/16/14
CIRC will once again be participating in the Peoria Riverfront Museum Engineering Day event! Come demonstrate your projects at the CIRC table or just bring your family and friends to check out all of the exciting displays. Admission to the museum will be FREE during this event! For a good summary of what to expect, check out our event article from the 2013 event. If you’re planning to help with our club’s display, setup starts at 11:00AM and they recommend you park in the lower level parking garage. All event volunteers can get their parking validated.
February 15, 2014 at 9:10 am | Announcements | No comment
2013 Bot Brawl Article in ROBOT Magazine!
Check out the September/October issue of ROBOT Magazine for an exciting article about our 2013 Bot Brawl!
July 30, 2013 at 11:06 am | Announcements, Uncategorized | No comment
