[Tyler]

BlimpDuino Competition Planned for Atlanta
     



Vince Wilczynski, of U.S. Coast Guard Academy, wrote to tell us about
an upcoming robot blimp competition that uses Open Source hardware and
software based on the Arduino
board:

University students are invited to participate in the "Aerial
Robotics Demonstration" to be held in Atlanta on April 17 & 18 in
Atlanta, GA at the Georgia Dome as part of the FIRST Championship. The
event involves programming a custom circuit board attached to a small
blimp to achieve a series of competition tasks.
The platform that will be used by the university based teams is the
BlimpDuino,
a very low cost open source autonomous blimp. BlimpDuino
consists of an Arduino-based blimp controller board with on-board
infrared and ultrasonic sensors and an interface for an optional RC
mode, a simple gondola with two vectoring (tilting) differential
thrusters, and ground-based infrared beacon. The history
of the project
is detailed at the project sponsor’s web site (diydrones.com):


Read on for the rest of Vince's announcement with further details of
the contest.
   

http://robots.net/article/2739.html