Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle)
Subject: Re: Old Robot from circa 1980
Message-ID: <nagleCz9uAz.1Ky@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <egersten-1311941722220001@sn197025.resnet.drexel.edu>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 19:04:10 GMT
Lines: 19

egersten@sn197025.resnet.drexel.edu (Eric P. Gerstenberger) writes:
>I was looking through various computing/robotic books the other day and
>came across an interesting robot and was wondering if anyone knew how to
>build it.

>Basically it ran on a language similar to logo and drew lines and stuff.
>I was interested in building it because it looked simple enough.

      You're probably thinking of the "turtle" used for the original
"turtle geometry" work.  In the early days of Logo, before computer graphics
hardware was cheap, some educational users used mobile tethered gadgets
with two motors and a solenoid-controlled pen as a sort of mobile plotter.
Terrapin, Inc. of Cambridge MA made the things.  It sort of went out
of fashion once computer graphics reached the PC level.  

      The original turtle was a two-driven-wheel machine under a plastic
dome, driven by steppers.  That's easy to build.

						John Nagle
