
Team Hassenplug made a connect four LEGO bot, it's takes a very steady hand...! - "This is a robot that was designed and built to play Connect-Four in a contest against other robots, which it was lucky enough to win. During the event, it didn't lose any games (once I remembered to plug the AC into the RCXs). The name comes from the method it uses for checking the board. Six axles are pushed into the six vertical holes, contacting any chips which are in the board. This process is repeated seven times (once for each column)." [via] - Link.
LEGO Connect Four Robot
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I had occasion this weekend to see another Connect Four-playing legobot this weekend.
Unlike Full Contact, this one kept to the limits of the original RCX kit: three touch sensors and two motors (the third output is used to trigger the opponent's turn if bot v. bot).
Very clever implementation by a member of Chicago's House of Bricks, that used a plunger to test the depth of each column. The same plunger, if raised far enough up, would let the checker drop, and retracting the plunger arm all the way to the left auto-fed the next checker. The programming was smart enough to look for win/lose conditions first (did the opponent block my open win locations, did my opponent win where he could have), and is efficient enough to stop "plunging" when a checker is found, and when it knows a column is "full". Very nice work. Beat nearly everyone I watched play it.
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