Big Trak
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BIG TRAK / bigtrak was a programmable electric vehicle created by Milton Bradley in 1979.
It was a six-wheeled tank with a front-mounted blue photon beam headlamp, and a keypad on top. The toy could remember up to 16 commands which it then executed in sequence (such as "go forward 5 lengths", "pause", "turn 30 degrees right", "fire phaser" and so on. There was a "repeat" instruction allowing simple loops, but the language was not Turing complete, lacking branching instructions; the Big Trak also lacked any sort of sensor input other than the wheel sensors.
There is now a small but dedicated Internet community who have reverse engineered the BIG TRAK and the Texas Instruments TMS1000 microcontroller inside it (see external links).
The US and GB/European versions were noticeably different. The US version was moulded in gray plastic and labelled BIG TRAK whereas the GB version was white and labelled bigtrak with a different keypad.
Bigtrak also included an optional trailer accessory. Once hooked to Bigtrak, this trailer could be programmed to dump its payload.
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[edit] Soviet clone=
In the Soviet Union, a clone was made under "Elektronika IM-11" designation. Early production version was named "Lunokhod". It featured obstruction sensor disguised as plastic front bumper, which would stop the program when the toy got stuck. However, there was no provisions for an accessory, and its motion sensor was based on a cheaper reed switch instead of an opto-isolator. A later version named "Planetokhod" additionally featured a shootable rotor blades as an accessory, LED headlamps and rear lamps, and the on/of switch was relocated to the rear side. A Soviet popular science journal Nauka i Zhizn published a detailed article on the IM-11. [1]
[edit] Programmable keypad
All programming to BigTrak was done through the keypad shown here. There were no LED displays or ways to display program instructions, beyond actually running the program, which was done by pressing "GO". Other function keys included:
- Forward/Backward: Move forward and backward
- Left/Right: Turn the specified number of degrees in that direction
- HOLD: Pause for a number of seconds (GB version; P: Pause)
- FIRE: Fire the LED "laser" (GB; Photon Symbol)
- CLR: Clear the program (GB; CM: Clear Memory)
- CLS: Clear Last Step (GB; CE; Clear last step)
- RPT: Repeat a number of steps (primitive loop) (GB; x2: Repeat key)
- TEST: Run short test program
- CK: Check last instruction (GB; Tick symbol)
- Out: Dump optional trailer accessory
- In: Reserved for future expansion (GB; missing. Disabled or not implemented on most if not all BigTraks)
[edit] See also
- Robosapien - a remote-programmable humanoid robot
[edit] References
- ^ "Lunokhod for informatics study." - Nauka i Zhizn,1988,№4 (Russian magazine)
