Compiz Fusion - Some early results
27 Jul 2007After a lot of work to merge the free software projects Beryl and Compiz here are some early results of the new plugin manager called Compiz Fusion. The video is really impressive:
RRobots - Robocode clone
20 Jul 2007I just stumbled upon RRobots. RRobots is a C-Robots/Robocode clone written entirely in Ruby. RRobots provides an arena in which robots - controlled by user code - compete against each other.
Since the programming language is Ruby, no compilation or linking is required. When you’ve finished coding the robot, you are ready to go. The software makes use of a set of images (turret, body, radar with different orientations, explosions). Amazingly the whole software including graphical visualisation, simulation, and mixin-code for the robots is only 835 lines of code. It uses Ruby-Tk for visualisation. Up to 8 robots can participate in a tournament.
ruby rrobots.rb bots/SniperDuck.rb bots/SporkBot.rb bots/ShootingStation.rb bots/MsgBot.rbYou can download a self-extracting archive with lots of robots from the robots forum.
Openmoko online store opens
11 Jul 2007The Openmoko webstore has opened now. According to Linuxdevices 1000 Neo1973 phones are available initially primarily targeted at developers.
The current version of the phone (release GTA01Bv4) costs $300 and has the following features as shown on the product page:
- 2.8” VGA TFT color display
- Touchscreen, usable with stylus or fingers
- 266MHz Samsung System on a Chip (SOC)
- USB 1.1, switchable between Client and Host (unpowered)
- Integrated AGPS
- 2.5G GSM - quad band, voice, CSD, GPRS
- Bluetooth 2.0
- Micro SD slot
- High Quality audio codec
The next version of the product (release GTA02) will be for the mass market. It will cost $450 and it will include Neo1973:
- 802.11 b/g WiFi
- Samsung 2442 SoC
- SMedia 3362 Graphics Accelerator
- 2 3D Accelerometers
- 256MB Flash
- 1700mAh Battery
- Faster CPU - S3C2442/400
TU Darmstadt replacing Sony Aibo
04 Jul 2007
For participating in the Robocup researchers at the institute for simulation and systems optimisation at the Technical University of Darmstadt were using Sony AIBO robots in their Robocup team called the Dribbling Dackels. Sony has discontinued the AIBO project some time ago and finally Oscar von Stryk and his team at TU Darmstadt decided to develop a successor for Sony’s robot dog. The robot is going to be released on the market end of this year but depending on the demand initially it it will probably only be available for Robocup teams. It took six months to develop the robot in collaboration with the Hajime Research Institute (Osaka, Japan) which helped out with the mechanical part.
A new web-page by TU Darmstadt gives some more information on the robot:
- the size is 40x30x25 cm^3 and the weight is 2.5 kg
- it has 15 rotary joints (3 for each leg, 3 for the neck)
- the on-board camera has a resolution of 640x480 pixel with up to 90 frames/second (I wonder what camera this is)
- a 500 MHz AMD-Geode-LX800 runs Linux or Windows onboard and offers VGA, 2 USB, LAN, and a memory-card interface
- it is equiped with WLAN as well and has a mini display and four buttons
- it is powered by a Lithium-ion polymer battery
For designing the casing a professional design company was employed (Gotha Design). More information on the robot will be available starting from July 7th on the website http://www.thenewrobot.com/.