Robotics Monday: Marble Machine

Name of Model: Mark's Magnificent Marble Machine

Created by: Mweston

Found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEFcgBpCI1g and http://www.csc.uvic.ca/~mweston/construction.html

Details: I believe that no explanation is needed for this nice little machine. To be fair though, this isn't a true robot because it does not involve sensors of any sort - it just lets various motors run and the actions take place whether there is actually a marble in that spot or not. It works really well in spite of that though.

Marble Ladder

Name of Model: Lego Marble Ladder

Created by: John Snyders

Found at: http://hardlikesoftware.com/weblog/2007/03/07/lego-marble-machine/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WX-TYK7LJY

Details: Here's an interesting little LEGO machine - it uses various LEGO TECHNIC parts to replicate a toy marble machine. On it's own, that would be cool enough, but this also has a motorized ladder that lifts the marbles back up to the top of the course regularly. The mechanism appears to be a sort of enlarged cam type thing. You can get the idea fairly quickly from the video below. Oh, and I saw that there was an RCX in the video, but since it's being used as an expensive battery box, I'm not going to count this one as a robot. Here's the video of this in motion: