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Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Wall-E is probably the CUTEST robot ever. (Except for my Styrobots, of course!) The way he says his name ‘WwwwaaallLL Eee’ is irresistible.

I see Wall-E everywhere. And, much to my joy one day… I looked out the back window, and I saw Wall-E! This means that at least once per day, I get to see Wall-E! WOOT!

*note: pics taken a long time ago

I really can’t wait until this movie comes out!! Imagine how cool Epcot will be, too. Meet the Robinsons + Wall-E!! It’s quite crazy how Pixar is just doing better and better with each animation they make. I really never thought that anything would be better than Finding Nemo, ever.

One of the things I can’t wait for is the robot! Er well, I can’t wait for me to gently tear apart the robot and hack it OR make it run on an Arduino! How cool would that be?! Having a Wall-E working off of an Arduino, connected to Processing. I could have all sorts of ultrasonic sensors… personalize it… make a conversational program (based off of Robbie the Robot) for it… WOOT!

Check out these two videos – they’re REALLY cool!

Wall-E ROCKS!

Posted in: News, Projects, Robot, Robot News.

Interviewed!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008

…and not for a job Check it out on RoboJenny’s site.

Yaay 1st interview!! ^_^

Posted in: News, Robot News.

|Advanced Order| and |Thanks, MAKE!|

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Thanks to MAKE for featuring my Styrobots. I really appreciate the encore! Encore encore encore! Yay!!

There is one Styrobot left – Spideygoo – in my Etsy store.

The next ones that I’ll be uploading (fruity themed!) will all be advanced order. Meaning, the switch, battery, and motor have not been installed yet, and they will only ship when I come back from the Stanford trip.

Also- I figured out a way to connect many Arduinos together without using a computer as a central hub. It will sort of be the speed of light minus processing time. Kind of like Fibre optics but a bit different. ;D I think it will work well! I’m going to be using this knowledge to make a super powered Wall-E robot with AI. =D

Posted in: News, Projects, Robot, Robot News.

Astonishment

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

You know that Cylon contest, over at MAKE and DVICE?
Well, I may not have been able to enter, but they featured my Styrobot!

I went from $200 to $700 to $1000 in a matter of hours. I’m quite flattered, really!

I’d just like to shout-out to everyone that has helped! This means all the anonymous people, thank you all so much! Also, Jon, Win, Norri, Adrenalynn from Trossen Robotics Community Forum for buying my three Styrobots (and wanting me to autograph them XD), RoboJenny, Mike, Chris, Laurel, and (a different) Chris!!! Thanks so much to all of you. I really appreciate it.
Also, thanks a bunch to Steve who made the article on Robots.net and Kevin who made the article on DVICE.com. I really appreciate it!

I updated some stuff around as I had spare time,

• Posted pics of Teachers Styrobots
• Posted pics of Rube Goldberg machine
• Posted pics of uCHobbygoo

It has been an amazing few days, thanks to everyone! I really do appreciate it, really!

THANKS!

And thanks a bunch to Miss Gierus!

Posted in: News, Projects, Robot, Robot News, Tech News.

Talking Robots – Cynthia Breazeal!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, April 11th, 2008

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!

(Yes, I do believe this post is worthy of an OMG factor of 10 in BIG font!)

I just checked my Net News Wire @ 11:42PM tonight – and Talking Robots has Cynthia Breazeal! OMG!

That’s so AWESOMEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO TOTALLY AWWWWEEESOMEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I can’t wait to listen to it tomorrow!

Nexi is just so unbelievable… likable! Scary, at first, but really cool! And Kismet… Kismet inspired me to make Robbie the Robot! WOWEE!

You can check out Talking Robots here!

WOOOT!

Posted in: News, Robot News.

$50 from Scott Kaine

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, April 7th, 2008

After a most generous donation of $10 from uC Hobby, I was absolutely astonished when I had yet another email from PayPal, with a $50 donation!

This $50 donation is from Scott Kaine. Check out his blog, it’s pretty spifftastic! I’m at a loss for words. Thank you so much Scott! It truly means a lot to me. Thank you thank you thank you thank you multiplied by 1 zillion!

Not exactly sure what I will spend it on just yet. Perhaps a Wii Nunchuck controller, and a Motor Shield so I can use my 2 DC motors and make a different type of Segway! I’m thinking something like a skateboard, with a big surface area and big tires so I can balance. For some reason, the idea of a big stick in front just doesn’t cut it for me. (I want to be a RoboSk8r!) I don’t have much mass, so I think I could get away with using big wheels with a gear ratio for lots of power, and some speed, in a wooden chassis. I would use metal, but I have no clue where I could get some. Or I could use plastic from Ponoko! That way it will be pink. Or lime green! The possibilities are only limited to infinity – 1.

Posted in: News, Other, Projects, Robot News, Tech News.

Autism & Robots & Robbie the Robot

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, April 5th, 2008

Robbie the Robot, a human-machine conversation computer program I developed, has the capability aid autistic children. I’ve been thinking about this intensely for the past few weeks. Today (March 28), much to my excitement, my favourite podcast – Talking Robots – features guest Kerstin Dautenhahn!

This is what they say about her…

Kerstin Dautenhahn who is Research Professor in the School of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences at University of Hertfordshire in the UK, where she is a coordinator of the Adaptive Systems Research Group. Autism is a developmental disorder affecting around 91 people in every 10,000, mainly causing difficulties in social interactions, communication and imagination. Using therapy robots in the AuRoRA project, Dautenhahn has been pushing autistic children to learn essential social skills such as turn taking, joint attention and imitation. Armed with a lot of patience and zeal, her team has been adapting their robots and therapy sessions to each individual child, whether it’s about playing with wheeled robots or Dautenhahn’s toddler-sized Kaspar humanoid. She also presents her new project on Interactive RObotic social MEdiators as Companions (IROMEC) which looks at how autistic children can learn to cooperate and interact with each other through the introduction of a robotic mediator.

So, I listened to the podcast a few times and took some notes…

• A person with autism has several problems interacting with others
  • It’s a life-long development disorder

  • Problems social interaction and communication
  • Problems understanding facial expressions and body language
• It’s a spectrum dissorder
  • You can have withdrawn people to very able people (different sides of the spectrum)
• Children with autism enjoy interacting with robots as much as any other person. They’re realy fascinated by it. // This is a great fact, especially for the future development of Robbie the Robot
• Since they were interacting with an autonomous robot, it was completely open! – No concrete hypothesis.
  • Found they are very very very interested

  • Enjoy interacting with it
  • No fear interacting with the robot or touching
  • They were smiling, and very keen.
• Autistic children have problems with behaviours like joint attention and immitation. Designed trials, to test this. Particular aspects of behavioural aspects.
• What they did in their work with a humanoid that was able to move its arms and legs:
• Children could interact with robot by similarly moving arms and legs
• Child became more interested, immitated the robot and innitiated the interaction
• If the robot was unable to do that behaviour, child would try something different
• Imagine not being able to know turns for conversations… turn taking in special need schools is what they are teaching // A key target for Robbie the Robot!

  Robots are not a replacement for people. // AGREED!
  Robots simplify!

• Human-human interaction is very complex
  • Posture, body language, facial expression…

  • Tone, politeness, rules, queues
  • … we are to interpret them in a social way
  • For example: Do you know what time it is?
    Yes
    No
    Yes, it’s 4:30.
  • Social correctness is the last one
• You need to interpret what you hear and interpret their behaviour
  • Very difficult for a person with autism

  • Humanoids are not as complex
    • That way, you can use one to slowly teach the child

    • First you need to connect, and get the child interested
• Lots of results have to be published on how children can imitate or use joint attention
• More clinical study is needed
• Types of robots
  • Different types are suitable for different children
    • Low functional end – successful mobile robot engages attention. (Applied AI Systems).

    • Simple, robot moves around and has heat sensors and IR sensors
    • Chasing, tag, run around, etc. Very very very simple robot
    • More abilities, imitation … humanoid shape.
    • Designs and types of behaviours you want to explore.
    • Casper has facial expressions, it can turn its head, move arms, produce gestures, play peek-a-boo.
    • It really depends on what groups of children you are dealing with
    • Communication and interaction skills produce more challenges.
    • All in all, start with what you know about the child, and design objectives of trials for therapy for the children
    • Robots are individualized! This way, you can hope interaction capabilities develop
• Challenges from the Robotics point of view
  • Nature – important that robot is predictable

  • Scenerios are unconstrained
  • Sensor system has 100% reliability
  • More autonomy
• Summary of results
  • Children respond to a robot differently to a non-robotic toy

  • They are comfortable, they learn imitative behaviour, use robot to show joint attention
  • Emphasis on mediation aspect
  • Social mediator. 1 Robot, 2 children. Communication and interaction between the children
  • Collaboration is very difficult for a child with autism

  They use what they learn with the robot outside of the class.

• Although solid evidence is needed, there is big potential.

  Robot assisted therapy is a growing area! Commercialize these robots. Here comes Robbie the Robot!

  After breezing through all of my notes taken during this podcast, it becomes extremely obvious that Robbie can fit snuggly in a robot assisted therapy with an autistic child that is able to communicate, but sruggles slightly to keep a conversation going.

  Now, the big question is how am I going to make Robbie to the point where it is extremely intelligent and can assist autistic children?

• Use and exploit language models – be sure to include anything that can happen, as it might happen
• Work on continuous speech recognition – this way sentences can be heard
• Convert what is heard into a probable sentence – if what it said was wrong, the child might correct it, where then I can monitor and adjust it accordingly
• Add some algorithms to advance the conversation according to the number of times Robbie has conversed with that particular child, and for how long — this way, Robbie will be able to ‘coach’ them to have a normal conversation — Once they are able to do so, they won’t need Robbie anymore!
• Create a teddy bear, or bubble boy physical device to make it seem less frightening — however, that would have to be tested, as maybe they would be more frightening that just a laptop

  It definitely requires some thought, but I’m up for the challenge! ;D

  If this post made no sense, I highly recommend listening to the podcast itself, which can be found here, and the mp3 here.

Posted in: News, Projects, Robot, Robot News.