Don’t you hate it when the next generation shows up its elders? While trawling Flickr for pics of Mousey the Junkbot builds, I bumped into this mousebot, one built from an optical mouse. It repurposes the optics for dead-reckoning navigation. It also has an IR sensor, bump sensors, a serial radio link, charge-monitor, and self-charger contacts that mate with a base station. Total cost: about US$30 in parts. Maybe I’ll try and track the builder down and get him to tell us more.
BTW: The original Mousey is making the rounds. He just got back yesterday from a trip to an art museum in Chicago, where he was representing MAKE in a show about the history of DIY. Ah… to be young and globetrotting…
