[squeak-dev] Squeak, Etoys, Robots and Wiimote

Ricardo Moran richi.moran at gmail.com
Tue Dec 30 19:48:12 UTC 2008


Hi, for the past several months we (http://tecnodacta.com.ar/gira/?page_id=9)
have been working on making Squeak and Etoys a suitable platform for
teaching robotics. We have made some progress and now we have few robotic
kits that can be controlled with Etoys. These packages work reasonably well,
but they still contain some bugs.

SqueakNxt:
SqueakNxt allows the user to control Lego Nxt robots (
http://mindstorms.lego.com/) over a Bluetooth serial port. It has an etoy
interface and supports the servo motors and also the four basic types of
sensors (light, touch, ultrasonic and sound). Currently we only have support
for communication with direct commands but we are starting to work on a
translator from a subset of smalltalk  to NBC (
http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/). This will allow to execute Smalltalk
programs on the NXT.
You can get SqueakNxt from here: (http://www.squeaksource.com/SqueakNxt.html
).
To improve the performance we made a plugin that is available here: (
https://sourceforge.net/projects/squeaknxtplugin/).
We have only tested SqueakNxt on Windows but if the SerialPort class works I
believe it may work on Linux as well.

I-Sobot:
I-Sobot is the world's smallest humanoid robot in production (
http://www.isobotrobot.com/eng/). This package allows the user to control
the I-Sobot with Etoys using a serial Lego IR Tower.
You can download it from here: "http://www.squeaksource.com/ISobot.html".
You also need the "sapien.dll" file. You can get it from here: "
http://www.robotika.sk/mains.php?page=/projects/robsapien/".

RoboSapien:
RoboSapien is a toy-like robot designed by Mark Tilden (
http://www.wowwee.com/en/products/toys/robots/robotics/robosapiens:robosapien-v2).
This package allows the user to control the RoboSapien v2 with Etoys using a
serial Lego IR Tower.
You can download it from here: "http://www.squeaksource.com/Sapien.html".
You also need the "sapien.dll" file. You can get it from here: "
http://www.robotika.sk/mains.php?page=/projects/robsapien/".

RobotSoccer:
This project allows the user to develop robot soccer teams capable to
compete in the Fira Simurosot game. Currently it supports only virtual
robots, but making it work with real robots may be trivial.
This project is a bit more complex than the abovementioned because it
requires the user to program in Smalltalk. Robot Soccer is a complex
discipline so we believe Etoys is not good enough to develop highly
functional robot soccer teams.
It is available here: "http://www.squeaksource.com/RobotSoccer.html".
You are also going to need the RobotSoccer simulator (
http://www.fira.net/soccer/simurosot/R_Soccer_v15a_030204.exe) and the proxy
(http://tecnodacta.com.ar/gira/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/proxy.rar). The
proxy is a team developed in c++ that uses sockets to interact with any
software platform, i.e. Squeak. As the simulator only allows teams developed
in Lingo or C++, we need the proxy to link the simulator with Squeak.
We have also a tutorial but it's written in Spanish, in case you are
interested here is the link: "
http://tecnodacta.com.ar/gira/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/tutorial-de-futbol-de-robots-en-squeak.pdf
".

SqueakWiimote:
This project is simply a FFI interface to the wiiuse library (
http://www.wiiuse.net/). It allows to interact with several Nintendo Wii
remotes using Squeak and/or Etoys. Although this project doesn't have
anything to do with robots, controlling the robots with the wiimote becomes
easy using Etoys. And it's fun!
You can download it from here: "
http://www.squeaksource.com/SqueakWiimote.html".
You are also going to need the SqueakWiimote plugin (
https://sourceforge.net/projects/squeakwiimotepl/) and the wiiuse library (
http://www.wiiuse.net/).
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