Hi all!

I've been looking around under this subforum and I would appreciate if anyone can help me here.

I need to buy, or create, or build some sort of remote control vehicle or robot that can go through the following obstacle course (see below pictures)

As you can see from the photos, i need something that can climb over metal frames (the frames are on the ground and thickness range from 1 to 2 inches or more), go through/over/around rubbish/dirt/etc.... and possibly, climb over an elevated horizontal pole (which maybe 3 to 6 inches above ground) My objective is for the vehicle/robot to go through such a course for a distance around 20 to 40 feet...and it has to carry a cable to the target area and then return......

the robot/vehicle would most likely need to have some kind of "hand" or clamp that can carry the cable... and i probably need to be able to control the "hand"/clamp as well...

Based on your experiences, what kind of advice would you give me?

LEGO Mindstorm NXT (or NXT 2.0) seems like a good choice for my particular need, but i'm not sure if it would work or not...and finding it in KL seems to be a very big challenge...sigh...

Or any of you kind sifus are part of some robotics club or something that knows where to buy the parts and build a custom robot?

I also thought of maybe getting those RC monster trucks...but then i dunno how to attach a "hand" or an "arm" or a clamp on it that i can remote control as well....

anyway, hope you guys can help me out here!

if possible, give me an estimate of the cost to buy/build such a machine as well....

Hope you guys can really help me here!

Thanks a bunch!

And here's the "obstacle course"!!! (would NXT or other machines be affected by the dirt/dust in there? i.e. would the dust/dirt jammed the machine?)

tswern,

notice your brickbastion.com has a mindstorm category but no items inside. you gonna stock up soon? let me know how much you're selling... and whether its NXT or NXT2.0

Thanks!

ya, trying to install some cables...

but the place is quite big, long stick won't do... if it could i wouldn't have cracked my head over this...

Lynxmotion seems to be US based... a bit too high tech for my needs, i think... plus, it's gonna be very expensive too...

anyway, i've recently visited a shop doing some NXT classes. According to them, NXT is quite "brittle"... any fall or hard knocks might result in some lego parts falling off.... unless i do something (forgot the term he used) to strengthen the joints by adding more lego parts...so the total cost would definitely be more than 1 set of NXT...

sigh...


anyway, i found this recently:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7leJ3Sti_g

wonder if i can mod/hack it to do what i want....

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Added on March 5, 2009, 10:09 amThanks ian90!

Thanks for the tip... Vex Robotics seemed cool....and the VEXplorer is precisely the kind of robot/vehicle that I want... I was actually thinking of building the NXT into something like the VEXplorer...

sadly, the VEXplorer is out of stock....sigh... anyone knows where to get one locally or have one for sale?

anyway, i need to install this cable sometime end of march.... in the mean time, i'm still trying to find out how to mod/hack the toy i found...



This post has been edited by jesse: Mar 5 2009, 10:09 AM