Note: This section hasn't been updated since 2002

This past spring I took Intro to Artificial Intelligence. One of our projects was to build a robot that would play the game of Merels. A human could play the robot by simply moving the marbles, just as if he were playing another human. The robot can detect when a move has been made, and what move was made by using its USB video camera. The robot then moves the pieces using a crane.

We made the robot using several Lego Mindstorms robotics kits, two PIII boxes, a USB camera, scrap wood, metal, wire, and bearings.

My part of this project was the physical robot. I made the board out of some scrap plywood. I built an electromagnet to pick up the ball bearings that we used for pieces. Because the RCX cannot handle the current, I also made a circuit to interface between the brain's output and the electromagnet.

Here are a few pictures of the project. I'll probably add more information sometime.