Race to Mars!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, August 27th, 2007

On your marks… get set… GO!

Almost like a real race, it is the race to mars!

In a speech by the President George W. Bush in 2004, the U.S. government set an ambitious new course for NASA, with an explicit objective to further explore the solar system, and ultimately send humans to Mars. Although NASA’s near-term objectives for exploring Mars focus on further robotic exploration of the Red Planet, the robotic missions are designed to set the foundation for human expeditions. The European Space Agency also intends to send a human crew to Mars.

Yet because of the steep costs and risks involved in a human expedition to Mars, many argue that humans should not be sent, instead favoring robot-only missions that would attempt to accomplish the same goals. Some of the key arguments for robot and for human exploration of Mars are outlined below. The question of whether the benefits of human exploration of Mars would outweigh the risks and costs is subjective and highly complex.

This TV series sounds really promising, I can’t wait to watch it!

Posted in: News, Tech News.

Total Eclipse of my Heart

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, August 27th, 2007

Wow, I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some days now! That’s right, it’s the Total Eclipse of the Moon, August 28th at 5:52am-7:22am!

I have set up my telescope and camera, and like usual, my iPod will wake me at 6:00. The weather right now is perfect, not a cloud in the sky! And what timing too, right in the morning. I can forsee that I will have pictures to share tomorrow! This is probably going to be the second-ish total eclipse, I’ve seen, but this time I have my camera!

Check out this page for an awesome animation of the moon’s process! And for good reference, here’s NASA’s page.

And just for good measure, here’s a cool MIDI soundtrack.

Posted in: News, Other News.

Summer Xtravaganza Day 2

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, August 27th, 2007

Another day of fun Habbo stuff yesterday.

^ Video “summary” of the events.

Posted in: Animation, Projects.

Summer Xtravaganza Day 1

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, August 25th, 2007

Heheh, guess what I did from 3-9pm?
Played Habbo and helped out the Summer Xtravaganza!

Each year the Habbo eXperts do this, I was a part of it this year. It was okay, I wasn’t expecting to spend 2 hours hosting a game though! haha, it was all good though! Hope you enjoy that quick video of it.

Posted in: Animation, Projects.

Breadboarding 101

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, August 25th, 2007

Check out this article on Make.

You can learn how to breadboard! That’s sweet, I haven’t started breadboarding yet, just connecting LEDs, batts and a switch together with wires (that my dad would solder together).
Blogged this ’cause it may come in handy.

Posted in: News, Tech News.

Nintendo Necklace! OMG!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, August 25th, 2007

Ohhh wow!!

Check out this cool necklace!

Man, that’s SO COOL! I want one so badly. However, Sarah Lynne has none in her store anymore. Check out her store on Etsy.

Zut!!!! I really wanted one.

Posted in: News, Tech News.

Canadians Building Mars Robot!!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, August 25th, 2007

One of the things that I really want to do later on in life, is build a Mars robot. It turns out that Canadian Universities are going to be building one!!

With funding from corporations, a group of universities in Canada are hoping to build a robot for a mission to Mars. The project, named Northern Light, is shooting for a budget of $20 million and has the goal of finishing the hardware in a year (a tiny fraction of what a large agency like NASA would allocate). Another year will be spent testing, then off to Mars late 2009, possibly on a Soviet-built launch vehicle. The goal: Look for water and life. Group members currently include Universities of Toronto, Waterloo, Winnipeg, Western Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Calgary, New Brunswick and Simon Fraser.

It’s going to have to be built quickly though in order to be ready for 2009. Maybe they already have the blueprints from the engineers? Either way, this is too cool for school!

Link.

Posted in: News, Robot News.

New Roomba!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, August 25th, 2007

Oooh, there is a very sleek looking new Roomba out there!

Check it out, here.

The company, iRobot was cofounded by Helen Greiner, whom is one of my role models (also the company name is one of my favourite books :P). That’s really cool. Here’s more about the new Roomba:

Meet the new Roomba! The newest iRobot Roombas feature dramatically improved vacuum pickup, brush design, debris and particle filtering, advanced cleaning coverage and navigation plus innovative new scheduling capabilities.

Sounds good to me!

Posted in: News, Robot News.

The K’nex Computer!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, August 25th, 2007

Woah, this is so cool!

The K’NEX calculator stands over 10 feet tall, and can perform 4 bit addition and subtraction operations in about 30 seconds. The slowest part of the operation is the user entering the balls. From there the balls trickle down, computing the result of the operation, and then sending that through a 4 bit decoder, which flips a flag that tells the user the answer. Since it is 4 bit, we can add and subtract numbers from 0 to 15.

Posted in: News, Robot News.

Creating an H Bridge

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, August 25th, 2007

This instructable might come in handy.

Blogged it just in case I lose it.

Posted in: News, Robot News.