Archive for February, 2008

Female Robot Leader Honored

With the U.N. International Women’s Day coming up on March 8th, the Japan Times ran a special series in this Sunday edition highlighting "… the astonishing progress being made against considerable odds by women in Japan working in a wide variety of scientific fields, long thought to be the sole preserve of men."

They selected six women who represent "Japan’s brightest stars in the fields of science, technology and medicine, ranging from geophysics and cancer treatment to biodiversity and robotics." We were very pleased to find that one of these six wonderful women was our own robotics ’sensei’, mentor, and friend, Yukiko Nakagawa, the founder of RT Corporation.

Congratulations Nakagawa-san! It’s a well deserved honor!

Well done to her! That is quite a feat! After reading about her, she is definitely one of the people whom I will see as a role-model for now on.

Link.

Woah! The RT Corp store has some pretty awesome stuff!

Hats for MANOI! *freaks out with joy*

Sofa for MANOI! *squeaal*

So cool! I can definitely see my MANOI needing those.

On a more serious note, this article is an interesting read.

Then there is the "attractiveness" factor. As robotics expert Yukiko Nakagawa points out, "Girls are considered ‘uncute’ if they go on a date to a science museum and if they know more about the exhibits there than boys."

…Wow much? Going to a science museum would be pretty cool, in my opinion! I don’t understand how women can like science less than men. Is there really that big of a difference? :/ What makes a person different from one another are their decisions and personality! No one has to strictly conform to tradition. I like science and robotics because of the challenges! At the time, I had no clue when I bought my MANOI that it was one of the toughest athlete humanoids. But, with a little ‘work’ — I put work in quotes as it isn’t work since it is FUN, but physically it is work since I am exerting energy to create a force… — it’s going to be alright! I’ll have to figure out the gyros at a later date though. And, I did get it to walk last weekend instead of moonwalking forwards. *thumbs up*

I cannot wait to blog about my science fair project!! Keep a lookout for a post and a page on March 5th! It is really going to change the way humans and machines interact with eachother.

Until then, I’ll still be adding more to it. :D

MANOI’s New Groove

Heheh! Finally found a transformer that will supply 12V to my robot’s battery - so when it runs out I can just plug it in and keep programming smoothly! Before, I could only program 10 minutes at a time… horrendous!

So, is there ANY scientific value at all in this?
Yes!! MANOI is moonwalking forwards. Try doing that next time you have your dancing shoes on. ;D

Heheh! I know it’s not science fair… but it’s fun. :D I think I will work on science fair tomorrow morning! ^_~

Progress Thus Far

It’s time for a well needed progress report on my science fair project!

I’m not entirely sure when the deadline is, but I feel that I only have until the end of Feb to get the program working…

The program kind-of works. There’s a Begin Conversation button, and an End Conversation button. Click the begin one, and it will say Hi there. Say Hi back, and it will ask how are you. Reply good or bad, and it will then ask why.

There’s a gigantor flaw in this. One worded responses don’t make a conversation! I thought that the speech recognizer would be able to pick out the word if it is surrounded by other words… but it doesn’t. Shucks! I’ve sent out some emails to mailing lists and consulted all of the books I have to see if there is an answer to this… heh heh heh! I have a feeling that it will just have to be some code that listens for words in the language model without using a topLM array.

So I guess it is good news and bad news. Good news is, something works. Bad news is, it doesn’t work as pitched and there’s hardly any time left!

If anyone can help with this, it would be much appreciated :)