CHAPTER 27 ■ ENCOREMicro Snowplow
You’d place a robot similar to the roof rat outside on the driveway when it started to snow. The robot would
carry small loads of snow and deposit them in a specific location (a beacon of some kind would probably be
necessary). Although the robot would relocate only small quantities at a time, usually snow doesn’t fall that fast.
When I dared speak about this idea, people howled: “After a few hours, you’d walk outside to find your
robot frozen into an ice block against a snow bank,” and “No, no. You’d find that the robot was still working
diligently, yet it’s only accomplishment would be a network of snow caves and tunnels beneath a 4-foot drift.”
Slug Squisher
This one isn’t for the weak of heart, but it is for line-following robots.
In some areas, slugs and snails devastate home-garden vegetables. Organic gardeners are opposed to
poison bait, and beer traps are only effective against lush slugs or really desperate neighbors.
You could take advantage of the slug’s obvious weaknesses, its slow speed and fragile body. Place a
line course across major slug trails around your grounds. The robot would sleep when it was hot or dry, like
slugs. However, at night or when it was damp, the robot would speed along the line course, slicing up or
smushing any slimy critters in its path.
You’d need to calculate the maximum course length based on the best-case slug speed and the robot’s
width.
Automatic Street mailbox
This one is actually a pretty good idea. In rural areas or certain housing developments, the mail is delivered
to a mailbox that is detached from the house, usually quite a distance away.
In this scenario, the robot would look like an ordinary mailbox. After anything is loaded into the
mailbox (detectable by a photointerrupter beam), the robot would wait a short period of time to avoid
scaring the postal worker. Then, the robot would drive the mail into the house via a doggy door and dump
the mail at a predetermined location before heading back to its post. For security reasons, the doggy door
could be locked with an infrared security signal to open it.
Contests
There are a couple of United States autonomous-robot contests worth mentioning. By autonomous, I mean
no human beings with remote controls. There are also some contests aimed at professional electrical
engineers or graduate students, but they’re not appropriate to mention here.
If you don’t find any of these contests appealing, or if you are located too far away, consider establishing
a contest in your own area. You’d be surprised at the positive response of local libraries or museums to the
idea of hosting or providing facilities.
Worldwide Robot Sumo
Robot Sumo is a non-violent pushing contest between two robots. The robots dual in a flat black ring with
a white border (see Figure 27-25). The robots can detect the white border using the same technology that
detects the white line in a line-following robot. The first robot to be pushed out of the ring, or to fall out, loses.