Philip

This new design should level the disadvantages of Terence. A round shape is the best, to avoid
trouble with obstacles. The cage built around the robot is connected to microswitches making it act as
bumper. An additional sensor at the end of the cantilever perceives when a "punch" is placed to the
challenger. Also, the material forming this cantilever is flexible, now.
I used some new powerful servos, which made obvious, that an unregulated power-supply is insecure,
causing the MCU to stall. One more accumulator, an an added switching regulator solved the
problem. Look at Karl Lunt's home-page for more information on the regulator:
http://www.seanet.com/~karllunt/junkbox.htm
A new software model was needed to bring the the different parts of the district-fight-task into a structure.
Scientists at the MIT AI-Lab ( http://www.ai.mit.edu/ ) developed several models
of a so called behavior based intelligence.

January 2004:

The support for the ST72254 is worse - there is no free C-compiler to find at all. I was fed up with programming
machine language, so I decided to use a different MCU. This means to throw away the mainboard and the
complete software. But it was most tempting to develop in a higher level programming language.
At the moment I'm trying around with an Atmel MCU and it looks very good. A GNU C-compiler (there is even an ADA-compiler) and much Linux-tools are a real delight.
I took the parts from the old Terence and made a new chasis (same as Philip). This is why I call the new
project "Terence Metamorphosis". Soon, you will find more about my experience with that Atmels.