G ADGET GEEKS HAVE COME TO EXPECT that anything Segway inventor Dean Kamen is associated with is going to be innovative, possibly a bit over-hyped, and undoubtedly expensive. Such is the case with the Vex Robotics Design System ( vexrobotics.com). Offered exclusively at RadioShack, Vex grew out of Kamen’s FIRST Robotics Competition ( www.usfirst.org).
Where the Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System grew, in part, out of research and robotics competitions at MIT, Vex has origins in Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. The result is, like Lego, a friendly and open-ended user experience with a wealth of online resources.
Even at $299, the Vex Robotics Design System Starter Kit is reasonably priced for what you get (the add-ons, however, are another story). Its handsome carrying case comes filled with over 500 parts, including three gear motors, one servo, a variety of tires and hubs, 14 different gears, a microcontroller module, an RF receiver module with a replaceable frequency crystal, and a surprisingly decent 6-channel radio transmitter.
If Mindstorms is the robotic answer to Lego, then Vex is the Erector/Meccano analog. The main building components are stamped steel beams, rails, angle pieces, and panels, with attendant nuts, bolts, washers, and other hardware. The structural pieces are Swiss-cheesed with square holes to provide a maximum number of attachment points. The Starter Kit also includes four sensors: two limit switches and two bump sensors.
Your first Vex project: assemble the binder. The Vex Inventor’s Guide that comes with the kit is a
thick D-ring binder and a bundle of loose-leaf pages that you have to organize into it, including instructions for building a starter bot and other kit details. But each tabbed section has an excellent beginner’s tutorial on mechanical engineering, electronics, or other concepts used in robot building. The guide is thoughtfully modular, and as you buy add-on subsystems, they come with hole-punched documentation that you add to the proper tabbed section of the binder. Guide sections are all color-coded with the kit parts themselves — silver=structural materials, green=motion, red=sensors, and so on — and this color-matching helps newbie builders understand the mechanical and electronic subsystems and how they interrelate. Product boxes for the add-on subsystems and components are similarly color-coded.
The Add-Ons Add Up It is in the add-on systems that the real cost of the Vex system reveals itself. While the Starter Kit does give you a lot of great components for the money, you don’t get a full, true robot experience until you add a number of parts. Beyond using the included remote control radio to operate your creations (not very bot-ish), the Starter Kit’s microcontroller can be programmed only minimally out of the box, using banks of jumper blocks and little keys that turn on pre-wired routines. To do true programming, you need to purchase the Programming Accessory Kit ($99). Also, the Starter Kit ships
References:
Archives