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On one occasion we saw a chess based on LEGO Star Wars. Now it has come to our attention a macro project made for the concentration Brickworld 2010 to be held from 17 to 20 June in Chicago. This is a huge chess board which measured a whopping 14.5 m2! Can you imagine playing with a chess board like that? For more details, this is a robotics project using LEGO Mindstorms NXT and controlled remotely from a computer.

This monstrous project (its official name is Monster Chess) has need of a team of four people working hard for a whole year.

Let’s look at some data from this impressive chess:

• 38 LEGO Mindstorms NXT
• About 100,000 LEGO pieces, of which:
  • Approx. 37 000 dash
  • Approx. 18,000 for the base of the robots
  • Approx. 17,000 for the 3D models of parts
  • Approx. 23,000 for the tiles on the board

The game is controlled from a touchscreen computer, with the help of chess software that enables various game modes: Player vs. Player, Player vs. PC vs PC. PC. The computer communicates with each piece using bluetooth, indicating where they have to move. Have a look to the color mosaics that each square has in the middle, it is an unique color code, which allows the robots to report their exact position to the computer.

The software used is almost as impressive as its editing: LabVIEW has been used to control robots, C# to manage information from the computer and standard software to control the game of chess itself. This is a modified version of ChessBot chess software, which lets you save the current state of the game, resume a saved game (the unique color mosaic ic used for this), and show on screen possible or advisable movement.

Here you have some videos to watch it running

Attention to the dimensions of the board, in addition to the striking design of the pieces, with two formats: flat and 3D (3D design has movement!). There are other details such as the possibility of automatic restart of the game, with a single order all the parts go back to their original position, or that the parts leave the board when they are eaten by a rival piece.

More information on the official website.

Este artículo fue escrito el Saturday 12 de June de 2010 a las 20:03 y se encuentra en la categoría Other . Puedes seguir las respuestas a este artículo en el RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.