Over the past week I have been developing an effective bump sensor to reduce the risk of damage as Ally careers around the room. Owing to the larger size of this robot, something a bit more sophisticated than whiskers was needed and I am very pleased with the result.

I've spent some time this afternoon updating my robotics website and there is now considerably more there to interest my fellow robot builders, including details of the bump sensor. Please drop by and check it out.

http://asmith.id.au/robotics.html

I've set up a webcam covering the part of my work area devoted to robotics. You can see what is happening with my robots at any given time by pointing your browser at http://asmith.id.au/webcam.html. Update Implemented a work around for a file permission problem with the uploaded webcam image. After working perfectly for weeks, today of all days the webcam daemon suddenly began to misbehave.

After lurking on a daily basis for several years, I have finally created an account on robots.net. I'd like to take this opportunity to say hello to everyone. I'll endeavour to post some pictures and descriptions of my robotics projects in the coming weeks.

If you'd like to say hello informally, why not drop by the #robotics channel on the freenode.net IRC servers and introduce yourselves.

There are a bunch of hard core robotics geeks there ranging in skills from interested groupies to professional robotics researchers. We hail from all corners of the globe so there is almost always someone awake.