Woohoo! Robbie added to Apple downloads!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, March 13th, 2008

As Robbie would say… ‘Wowee’!

I’m so happy that Robbie made it in to the Apple downloads!

You can check it out here

MacUpdate also put it on its site!

That’s pretty awesome!

However, I still need people to complete the survey! So please, spread the word, and do the survey!

Thanks!

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot.

Robbie is UP and RUNNING!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

Robbie is now available for download! The current release is #21.

Check out Robbie’s work-in-progress page here!

And, I would extremely appreciate it if, after playing with Robbie, you can complete the survey here.

It’s now 1:35 AM when I’m posting this, so I’ll be fixing up the Robbie page and survey in the morning.

Have fun with Robbie!

A video will be up on youtube tomorrow evening, I hope!
UPDATE: 1:08pm - it’s all good now! I’ll be adding more pics and decorations to it throughout the next few days. If you can, please fill out the survey after you chatted with Robbie!

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot.

Robbie is Better than Ever!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, March 9th, 2008

Woooohoooooo!

So, the whole purpose of the 20-inch display being lent to me was to display a bigger Robbie. Check out the pics, he looks AWESOME! I just want to poke his chubby-wubby cheeks ^___^. Frankenteddy: Erin, Robbie doesn’t have chubby cheeks. Erin: Shhhh! x]]

I ran into some roadblocks today *coughtyposcough*, but thanks to scott he helped point them out to me! (THANKS!!!)

It all seems reasonably accomplishable now! I have to add in more levels to the conversation though, but I’ll probably put the app up for download tomorrow morning, after I make the survey form.

7 sleeps till science fair!

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot.

iFund

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, March 8th, 2008

John Doerr a Partner to Kleiner Perkins Claufield & Byers announced on March 8th something, most likely, life-changing. 

$100,000,000. For investment.

This can be applicable for any number of start-ups, companies, pre-launch, or what have you. The investments can range from $100K of seed capital to $15M of expansion capital in mobile application and service companies.  

That’s a lot of money, and an even bigger opportunity.   

I’m determined to invent better speech conversation technology. The possibilities of Robbie the Robot are limitless in my mind’s eye. Imagine being able to have your Apple TV, mac mini, or whichever mac server farm in your household, organizing all of the variables. How many eggs one has, what the temperature inside is, or the temperature of the pool. All it would take is asking Robbie, hands free, so you aren’t distracted while driving. I’m not 100% sure if iPhone does or does not have the ability to phone people based on speech, but I have an idea on how to do it. Thousands are killed in cellphone related crashes, hands free is the way to go.  

I’m going to apply, and see what happens. If this investment is bestowed upon me, my life would be changed forever, definitely for the good! If it isn’t bestowed upon me, I’m still going to work on Robbie! Nothing is going to stop me from modifying Robbie into life changing applications. For instance, teaching different languages, making children more focused and relaxed, aiding the elderly as a therapeutic device, helping some autistic children or teaching someone to READ. With all of the possible modifications of Robbie, it is bound to be a thrill. With that in mind, I wanted to end with a little quote during the keynote which I thought was really great.  

Entrepreneurs do more than anyone thinks possible, with less than anyone thinks possible. Entrepreneurs are the risk takers, they’re the revolutionaries, they’re the rebels.  

 

Good luck to everyone that enters!

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

Amazing Day at Apple

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, March 8th, 2008

The day after SDK for the iPhone was released, at 9:30 AM I had the opportunity to show Apple (in Montreal) my Robbie the Robot application.

Their office is extremely clutter-free, it was pretty amazing. Plus, there was a 1984 poster from the Apple Computer TV-commercical, which was neat. Not to mention, there was a mosaic of iPod characters. It was really colourful, and nice!

Let me start off by saying, it was an amazing demonstration!

I was originally going to meet with only 1 person, but that quickly changed to two more people, and another one! They were all really cool, of course. They were impressed, too. One of the jokes of it all was that, no matter who popped in, they asked whether I have the cable for the display to my macbook (which I don’t). They actually didn’t have one, but it’s on order. If it isn’t in on time, it’s not much of a problem to go to the Apple Store.

All in all, they are lending me a 20 inch cinema display! I am so fortunate, and I definitely counted my lucky stars. I took oodles of pictures of it, already! It is stunning. I have a feeling it is bound to stand out against the black display board!

 

 

I also had the chance to touch a Macbook Air. It is unbelievably light! And the keyboard with the backlight is awesome. Also, to debunk a myth, the same Magsafe power adapter does work, however it would put the laptop on an angle. The trackpad is pretty awesome too, with the multi-touch. So, that is pretty much it about the meeting with Apple! It was extremely fun, and I’d do it again! (And so would Robbie).

If you have time, please read my post about the iFund. 

Posted in: News, Programming, Projects, Robot.

Robbie the Robot

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, March 3rd, 2008

What does Robbie look like?

Yay!

More info will be up on the blog on the 5th!

Posted in: Art, Programming, Projects, Robot.

Female Robot Leader Honored

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, February 24th, 2008

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.

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

MANOI’s New Groove

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, February 15th, 2008

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

Posted in: MANOI, Programming, Projects, Robot.

Progress Thus Far

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, February 11th, 2008

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

Posted in: Programming, Projects, Robot.

The Holidays Have Officially… BEGUN!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, December 21st, 2007

Woohoo! At last, the holidays are here. This is the half-way point for this year at scool. I’m ecstatic. I always love Term 3 more than any other term… I think it is because of science fair and spring. Everything seems more positive… plus, 3 is my fav number.
This in mind, exams are still looming to wrap up Term 2, which really sucks! Exams SUCK! I hate memorizing things.
Anyway, who cares about school when there are thousands of articles and papers to be read about natural language processing and conversational artificial intelligence! AND hours of videos from iTunes U.
I’ll be spending most of my time researching & programming after the break, there will be no time to do anything. This also kicks off my BLOGGING BONANZA. I have oodles of articles that I want to add to my blog, so it doesn’t seem so desolate… the holidays have officially begun!

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