Archive for April, 2010

Autonomous Robotics Club & National Robotics Week

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, April 11th, 2010

The first annual National Robotics Week is from April 10-18!

The Autonomous Robotics Club will have a special hack-a-thon at it’s regular Wednesday meeting time (8:00PM).

We have plenty of things to hack, including some NXTs, a Furby, Tuxdroid, iSobot, Sneezing Lamp Robot, BubbleBoy, MANOI, iRobot Create, NXTcamv3! :D

If you’re around Clarkson, why don’t you stop by the Autonomous Robotics Club room? :) Hope to see you there!

Posted in: Projects, Robot, School.

iPhoneiPhoneiPhone… (Friday Night *)

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, April 9th, 2010

iPhone

If you’re ever looking for a challenge worth pulling your teeth out, making an iPhone App is a great place to start. Dealing with robots and living in Montreal, I’ve seen my fair share of challenges. Somehow, iPhone Apps are different. It’s overwhelmingly difficult, and oddly enough addicting.

The language, the concepts, everything is completely different from what is seen in languages like Java and C++. I’m starting to understand the concepts much more now. It really clicked once I saw the code of how table view cells are iterated through. In ObjC, things happen because of code that is called somewhere even though you have no idea what is going on. It’s a flowy type of thing- you don’t expect to see for-loops anywhere!

This is how a TableView is iterated through for its contents. In mine, it changes the font on the first and second ones… :P

  1. // Customize the appearance of table view cells.
  2. - (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath {
  3.    
  4.     static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"Cell";
  5.    
  6.     UITableViewCell *cell = [tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
  7.     if (cell == nil) {
  8.         cell = [[[UITableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleSubtitle reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
  9.     }
  10.    
  11.     // Set up the cell…
  12.        
  13.         //First get the dictionary object
  14.         NSDictionary *dictionary = [listOfItems objectAtIndex:indexPath.section];
  15.         NSArray *array = [dictionary objectForKey:@"Countries"];
  16.         NSString *cellValue = [array objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
  17.         cell.textLabel.text = cellValue;
  18.        
  19.        
  20.         if([indexPath row] == 0 && [indexPath section] == 0) {
  21.                 cell.detailTextLabel.text = @"Edit Me\n\crhi";
  22.         }
  23.        
  24.         if([indexPath section] < 2) {
  25.                 UIFont *titleFont = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Georgia-BoldItalic" size:18.0];
  26.                 [[cell textLabel] setFont:titleFont];
  27.         } else {
  28.                 UIFont *titleFont = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Helvetica-Bold" size:20.0];
  29.                 [[cell textLabel] setFont:titleFont];
  30.         }
  31.        
  32.     return cell;
  33. }

As you can see, it’s abstract. REALLY CRAZY ABSTRACT. Even if you can’t see it, it’s abstract.

I’ve been working on Apps for a large part of time of the day for many weeks now. Usually from 11PM until I get keyboard-faced (around 2AM). Wake up at 6AM and do it all over again! :) It’s a slow and tedious process.

One of the Apps that I’ve been working on for ages now was finally approved. It was rejected three times previously!!! It’s called North Country Now (for a local newspaper), and it has links to their website, Twitter, and a map of the areas that they cover. It also has view transitions and works seamlessly (That’s kinda important)! Click below to go to the App store to download it onto your iPhone/iPod/iPad.

It’s a really simple concept, but it will prove extremely effective for local small-medium sized businesses that want to extend their reach into the next generation. If you’re reading this and want to know how much it costs for your business to have one of these Apps, contact me and I will let you know We worked really hard to make it a fair and equal price. :)

Never give up on a challenge! Give things time, and they will surprise you. =)

Posted in: iPhone, Projects.

Tuxdroid Unboxing

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Tuxdroid Unboxing at COSI!

One long and labourious night at the COSI labs, some people were browsing ThinkGeek. They found this robotic penguin, Tuxdroid, and thought it would be perfect for the labs! It was ordered… and now COSI has a robot penguin! It’s a robot of the symbol of everything open-source! Fantastic!

It took a while to get all the way from Belgium to COSI, and it arrived the weekend of Boston FRC regional – March 26th! :) Everyone resisted opening it in the labs to wait for me… I really appreciated that! =)

Tuxdroid Unboxing at COSI!

Tuxdroid is basically like the Nazbaztag. Tuxdroid can interface with multiple applications on your computer to provide you with a real-world interface to them. A few of which are Skype, Gmail, RSS, and internet radio.

Tuxdroid Unboxing at COSI!

Tuxdroid can flap its arms, close/open its eyes, spin around, open its mouth, blink its eyes, detect light, and play sound. It’s a pretty good set of features that can communicate messages!

Tuxdroid Unboxing at COSI!

One of the best parts though is that you can make gadgets for it that execute code that you write! :) You can write whatever you want, and you can use Python! :D Tuxdroid already comes with some useful gadgets though, like saying random Valentine sayings, Christmas carolling, a sense of humour, etc.

Tuxdroid Unboxing at COSI!

It’s also wireless, and can span from about the COSI labs to the Concrete Cafe. That’s about 20m, I’d say? The wireless transmitter is a fish (that is FIRIN ITZ LAZORZ11!1). It has blue LEDs in its eyes that blink when not connected to the Tux.

Tuxdroid Unboxing at COSI!

That basically covers the unboxing of the Tuxdroid. It’s a pretty spiffy piece of equipment that adds spice to any computer lab! Of course, it has secret plans to take over COSI too…

Tuxdroid Unboxing at COSI!

Posted in: Other, Projects, Robot.

Zombial Robotics

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Based on results from a computer program executed last night, social robotics is NOT achievable.

All researchers should therefore shift focus to a more advantageous field of robotics: Zombial Robotics.

All robots on RobotGrrl.com will now be zombies. All social robots will be overrun by a zomboni machine.

——

RobotGrrl.com- version 4.01 ;)

Posted in: Art, Projects.









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    Welcome to RobotGrrl's blog! The posts that are updated here explain the various projects that I am working on, including robots, programs, Apps, photography, and explorations within sociable robotics.

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