This week's attention is rightly focused on the announcement of the $10M Progressive Automotive X PRIZE [1]. Caught up in the excitement, we here at the Google Lunar X PRIZE headquarters in Washington, DC, decided to have a little auto-esque fun ourselves.
As you may already know, we commissioned a trusty rover to use as part of our own prize announcement, back on September 13 of last year. It was put together quickly by a small group: essentially one graduate student [2] and one professor [3] at the University of Oklahoma [4]. It's guts are pretty simple--a Game Boy Advance and a Mac Mini make up most of the rover's brains. The rover debuted at the announcement of our prize, and was a big hit with the kids--who liked it even more when they found out it ran on the same Game Boy Advance so many of them play with every day.
We also used it at the X PRIZE Cup and a few other events; then we shipped it back to Oklahoma for a few modifications. It just arrived back in our office this week, so, swept up by the Auto excitement, we decided to take it for a spin here in our office.
The new modifications let us control the rover using a Wiimote. That controller's motion sensitivity allow us to simultaneously drive the rover and turn its head or use its robot arm. It's going to take a bit of getting used to, but it is certainly a lot of fun. I can tell already that this will be a great tool to get children excited about our prize, and about robotics and technology in general.
Now, to get him to help walk my dog...
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