iPhone!!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Saturday, October 18th, 2008

I got an iPhone yesterday!!! Yay!! (belated birthday present)

…Of course, this happiness if a prelude to a TONNE of hard work that I’m going to do. I’ll be developing apps for it!
I’ll still be working on MANOI today though… hopefully finish the Processing - Arduino & SSC-32 program. It’s really difficult!

Maybe I’ll be able to have the iPhone control MANOI some day bahaha

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

Problem after Problem after Problem

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Thursday, October 16th, 2008

Wow, hahahaha I meant to post this yesterday! I wrote it all up… then forgot! Haaa woow

It really feels like I’ve been working on this software to control MANOI for ages now. On Friday I thought that I was really close to finishing off- that it would be so simple to send a variable from Processing to the Arduino.

Evidently, that assumption is DEAD WRONG! I have to send it through Serial. This raises many problems, like the possibility that the data might be fed to the SSC as well.

I’m now powering the SSC-32 by the Arduino. It’s plugged in to the Gnd and pin 6, so I can tell it to turn on or off. PLUS, I have a latching switch on the 5V, just in case.

So it almost feels like I can safely say that I’m really close to finishing off. I’m playing around with code that only sends data to Arduino when it knows it will receive it. Of course, when I try to send data to the SSC-32 it messes the whole process.

The moon last night (2 nights ago) was really bright… it looked pretty through my telescope This Harvest Moon is one of my favourites because you can see Tycho Crater.

Posted in: MANOI, Programming, Projects, Robot.

More MANOI

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

I always have problems adjusting MANOI’s feet. It’s kind of cool that all of the balancing of the robot comes down to its feet. Hardly anything else matters, other than the feet!

My blog posts seem pretty boring without pictures, so I’m trying to keep this short…

So what I’m setting up now is a program to code MANOI! It will be in Processing. I’m going to be using the controlP5 library for all the buttons and the sliders
Hopefully I’ll be able to get MANOI up and running (really) before December! The new Trossen Robotics contest prize is pretty amazing @_@ Imagine winning a Pleo!! Cuteness! The contest is going to be tense.

Since we’re allowed multiple entries, you can be sure that I’ll enter a fugly MANOI (with all the wires and ‘gutz’ showing) and a cute MANOI (with its pretty white shell on with necklaces). I don’t really understand why everyone thinks that something that is cute isn’t a robot. It’s kind of weird
I ordered two of the new ATmega chips. Essentially this will be great for MANOI! MANOI has a Wave Shield on the Arduino, and I’m thinking about getting a shiftOut to control LEDs for a LED necklace. I might even use one of the digital potentometers on the necklace too! BlinkM LEDs would be cool, but it would be a bit over-kill. I’m thinking Blue LEDs.

I’ll also be programming MANOI with many dances… from Thriller to Soulja Boy… seriously.

But, the first step is to get this software programmed up so I can complete MANOI’s home position.

Posted in: MANOI, Projects.

Festive Styrobotz

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, October 6th, 2008

Custom Styrobots are really fun to make… and they cost the same price ($20). A friend wanted a yellow Styrobot, with green hair with a comb in it, two combs on the cup, and a poem. It was pretty fun to make! Despite the rotation of the pics being messed up… here are some pictures!

The poem on the back is ‘The Road not Taken’ by Robert Frost. It’s a pretty good poem Here are morrrre pictures!

Great eh! There will be 3 NEW Styrobots appearing in my store very soon They’re all Hallowe’en themed.

In my opinion, Battygoo is really cute as are the other ones! Asside from that… MANOI is aliiiive! I’m currently in the middle of making a program to set its home position.

So keep an eye out… the Styrobots will be poppin’ into the shop very soon

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

Fun Weekend Ahead

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, September 26th, 2008

This weekend is going to be pretty fun for me
I have soooo many things to play with, it’s going to be wickedly hyper awesome!

I went to the RobotShop and got my Lynxmotion SSC-32, Soldering station, and some female jumper wires, and a force sensing resistor!
The SSC-32 is awesome! I tried it out the other day, and my MANOI is ALIVE! I made it move its head
The only thing though is that I’ll have to power all the servos externally - which is okay now as I got a 12V DC transformer to plug into the breadboard
The soldering iron is horrible I was (and still am) trying to solder the Wave Shield, but the solder won’t stick to the iron So far it has taken me 3 hours (and counting) just to solder in the resistors. The iron doesn’t melt the solder, and the flux is GOOEY! It’s disgusting! I’m even trying lead solder (this stuff SUCKS) and it won’t work… going to try to sand the tip tomorrow, and see if it works better.

The old soldering iron literally exploded… so it’s in the garbage now.

I also bought a nintendo wii nunchuck (the accelerometer thing) to go with my WiiNunchuck Arduino adapters. I’ll be using it to control MANOI (and of course, many Processing programs)

I was playing around with the Fourier transform again today… and I somehow made it to morph time. It’s really freaky! I was recording sound, when my watch beeped. When I played back the sound (after the FFT alg) it was morphed… in a totally weird and unexplainable way XD kind of sped up, but also kinda moshed together…

This entire week I’ve been studying for the SAT. This pretty much involves me trying to sit in one place, focus on one thing, and not fall asleep/daydream for 4 ENTIRE HOURS! I just can’t stay focused that long… I make so many sleepy mistakes … I have absolutely no idea what to do. The real SAT is on October 4th (in 1 week) I’m not really in a panic as the test is so trivial and boring … I just can’t focus on one thing for more than 45 minutes! My brain is always in hyperdrive mode thinking about what ifs and whys… “Why exactly do they think this test evaluates your reasoning abilities” “What if they made this test interactive, like a game, on a computer?”

I’ve been asking what if and why a lot the past week… here’s some of the questions I can remember

What if time wasn’t measured in anything… but was just a continuous flow like a river
Why do we have to measure time?
Why do we always use graphs in two dimension? I don’t care about a squiggle function on a line… why can’t everything be graphed in 3 dimensions?
Why do we always round decimal points when it’s obvious it gives us inaccurate answers?
Why is the tinfoil on my lamp making high pitched noises like vibrations? Is it because of the heat… or did I just discover something I should look into further about light?
What if light had mass?
Why don’t we know what’s in/through a black hole?
What if we could make our own net of space and see how everything interacts with anything?
Why didn’t they put more corrector magnets into the LHC?
What if the computer isn’t monitoring enough information to really see what the Higgs is like?
What happens if they’re smashing the wrong particles together?
Why can’t they just model it on a computer?
Why is the LHC in a circle?
What would happen if it was in a spiral?
Why are my desks always messy?
What will happen when robots will become pets?
Why are people so judgemental about robots?
Why are robots stereotyped to be wirey and ugly?
What if the answer to better AI systems would be to create an “AI Internet” with many algs, and an API, to create a general AI?
What if cancer can be eliminated with the use of dandelions?
What if robots could code themselves and make better versions of their algorithms?
Why is random not random?
What if there were many robots in one square, and they were given random coordinates to navigate to and from? Would it be classified as swarm robots as eventually they will all converge?
What if I made a parrot robot that could read twitter feeds out loud, in a parrot voice?

So yeah… that’s pretty much the way I think all the time… I hardly can focus on one thing, ever!

Weeeee I can’t wait to get MANOI moving and waving this weekend!

Posted in: MANOI, Other, Programming, Projects, Robot, School.

Current Robot Projects

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, July 20th, 2008

Yay! I have access to the internet
After being at Stanford, I really realized that I extremely like AI and robotics. So, I have many robot projects going on all at one time. Here’s a list:

• Line following, maze navigating, AI robot
  • Using an Arduino and Processing
  • Started this project at Stanford (they funded it!)
  • 2 DC motors
  • 5 LDRs
  • Chassis is a cardboard and plastic beginners robot kit (bought at the ExplOratorium while at Stanford)
  • I need a gearbox!
• BubbleBoy
  • A robot that has fake emotions determined by the pushes of buttons and the LDR
  • Using Arduino and Processing
  • 2 Servos
  • 1 LDR
  • 2 Push buttons
  • Chassis is the older BubbleBoy - Pinky one I created
  • I need another Arduino - or an RBBB!
• MANOI AT01 -> Arduino
  • Transplanting my humanoid to the Arduino board
  • I need 2 or 3 Pololu micro serial servo boards - they can be controlled via a TXRX line, making it easy for the Arduino to control many servos
  • Will write software to control the servos in Processing (easy GUI!)
• Phoenix
  • Basically, my project for the year. *cough*ISEFhopefully*cough*
  • Uses much of the knowledge I attain from all projects and the Stanford EPGY Summer Institutes AI Program
  • Hospital bedside accompaniment
  • I’m purposefully lacking details here.

Some of the parts I need immediately in order to continue building are expensive though
But hey, there’s always Styrobots in my shop ready to be purchased!!

In the meantime, I’m still annotating and pulling all the details out of these books…

• Building Sociable Robots
• Probablistic Robotics
• AI Textbook from Stanford
• AI journal book from Stanford
• The Emotion Machine
• Intro to AI

I’m also compiling a huge blog post of over 1,000 pictures from Stanford
Soon after that, I’ll post pics of these projects

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

Friday Night MANOI!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, April 25th, 2008

W00T W00T!

This week’s Friday Night MANOI was dedicated to the Cylon contest on MAKE. Since I only found out about it on Tuesdayish, and the deadline is pretty soonish, I had to come up with something QUICK. I have a humanoid, MANOI, and I do have artistic skills… so I came up with Paper Cylon!

Why Paper Cylon, though? Remember Paper Mario? That game was so uber cool, and fun. What if there were Paper Cylons? That would be pretty funny. Although what I made will be improved on later dates, I think it may hit the nail on the head for random creativity.

I took lots of photos, I like Paper Cylon!

Posted in: MANOI, 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.

MANOI AT01 - Day 13, 14, 15 & 16

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, March 26th, 2007

Weehoo!

My 14 days of MANOI has now wrapped up. We haven’t yet finished cutting out the shells yet, but I got it all programmed to dance (weirdly), and to wave a flag so that it won’t bee too much of a rush for the science fair on April 1-2-3
Here are some videos!!!

Dance

Wave

Kinda Walking

Hopefully everything will work out in the end! I attatched the legs backwards… I find they look and work better this way.

Posted in: MANOI, Projects, Robot.