Save your detective work. My name is Addy Yeow. Trust me, Addy came in before the internet community coined the term 'addy' which is the other word for email address. Anyway, my addy is det_re@yahoo.com. AFAIK, most of the people in the BEAM community came from United States or Canada. But, I for one, is among the stranger from the far east of the globe; Butterworth, Malaysia. However, as of late, we have a couple of fellow beamers from Philippines! Drop me a line if you plan on visiting my country; you may have a chance to check out my BEAM workshop! (duh! that's boring).

I am always fascinated by the technological advances in the vast field of robotics. But it is ironic really, I don't know much about electronics. The basic Ohm law? Maybe. The best I know is probably up to what I have learnt during my physics class in the high school. But, that is where it stops. I immediately got attracted to BEAM robotics upon reading an article featuring the BEAM machines by Mark W. Tilden in Reader's Digest back in August 1998 [1] [2]. It has since changed my perception of robotics. I do not really need a good background in electronics to get a hands-on experience on building BEAM robots! As it turns out, I realize that BEAM robotics is an excellent top-down approach to learn electronics and robotics altogether. The rationale here is that, it is likely that we are force to learn how our robot works which includes the theory behind the circuit's design; perhaps some physics laws, etc. as we progresses with the construction.

With so many variables (e.g. trade-off between solar and battery power) that lie within the design of a BEAM machine, we really need to take in many creative considerations to come up with the final working robot. My interest in BEAM robotics focuses largely on this creativity. That said, I would love to see BEAM machines, which differ in construction materials and performance (e.g. speed, durability) given the same circuit. As for the circuits, I would say that one notable active contributor (of course with the exception of Mark W. Tilden, the founder of BEAM robotics) to the BEAM community is probably Wilf Ritger! Wilf has even helped me to design the circuit for AVRIL's IR reverser. Of course there are also many other wonderful people in the BEAM community. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to these people and to you too for your patience up to this point.

June 12, 2007