Adventures in California

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, June 24th, 2011

I had an absolutely wonderful time in California! There was a lot of Apple fun, I visited Anybots, and also Google, ADK, San Mateo Fair and Diner.

Here is a video compilation on YouTube!

It was great to meet everyone. All of the new friends and everything! I also did not get a chance to meet some people… Trejo, Jeremy, Tanio, Ithon, Max et al and others too!

Looking forward to next year, with any luck!

Posted in: Fun.

Apple fun

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Friday, June 24th, 2011

I’ve been using an Apple computer since I was 3, so seeing all of this Apple stuff was really interesting and exciting I won a student scholarship to go to WWDC 2011, where I learned sooooo much stuff!

When I got there they were just painting or gluing the logo on

There’s also some banners everywhere (I guess so that you don’t forget what you are there for?)

This is how they get the banners onto the ceiling, they start at the bottom.

This building is really tall… @_@

A few of the people organized a pilgrimage to the mothership, it was awesome!

Check out the security guards in the background staring at Dogcow robot… hahaha!

I was sort of meh about the keynote. It isn’t my favourite thing of WWDC, and it is kind of weird how everyone makes a big deal out of it. I decided to go and line up around 6AM. I had a pretty good place in line, I would have had a really good seat if I didn’t walk up to the front where there were empty seats. The empty seats were “saved”. So I ended up in the back, thankfully there were still seats left o_O

I liked this slide a lot because it was so colourful!

The bash was SOOO boring, although I did talk to some pretty cool people!

The last day was kind of sad because not many of the engineers in the labs wanted to help because they were all tired and stuff. And then we had to leave…

Mac OS X DOGCOW!

Bye, WWDC!

Overall, WWDC was a really cool experience. I was disappointed though that some of the technology I was hoping to be released for iOS was not. It was still a lot of fun learning more about speech synthesis and recognition on the Mac, and also learning about hardware devices on iOS and Mac. I also learnt about blocks, and they are SO COOL!

I absolutely enjoyed meeting everyone! For everyone that came up and asked questions about Dogcow robot, thanks! You totally made my week!

Hopefully if I am able to go back next year, I will be able to meet more people and learn even more! Maybe I will even have a shot at the Apple Design Awards, now that I know what they are

Posted in: Fun.

Dogcow Robot Building!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, May 29th, 2011

For WWDC I want to bring a robot that is small, light, and Apple-riffic, so I chose a Dogcow on my Rampage Robot base!

Most of the time Dogcow bot will be controlled by my iPad using TouchOSC. The way this will work is that the iPad will be connected to the WWDC wifi, the TouchOSC App will be talking to a Processing sketch running on my Macbook (also on wifi), the Processing sketch will be using Firmata to talk to the Arduino. Unfourtunately, this means that the robot will have to be connected via USB cable which probably won’t be much fun, unless I implement a quickie Xbee solution.

There will also be a mode where the Dogcow robot can be autonomous. It has a switch, a potentiometer, and an ultrasonic sensor on it. The switch will control what direction the wheels will be going (forwards or backwards), and the potentiometer will control the speed.

If the potentiometer is in the slowest position, and the switch is set to backwards, then there can be a routine going where the Dogcow robot is roaming around with its ultrasonic sensor and “latch on” to someone if they come within a certain distance. This would essentially use a PD loop, if I have enough time. If not, an if-statement will work.

The programming isn’t done yet, but I hope to finish it tomorrow. And hopefully the curse of the blog-filled promises will not strike! XD

Making a small, semi-stable robot platform is really tricky. I’m used to more loose and experimental robot platforms, I guess!

The potentiometer is huge. I would definitely not recommend huge potentiometers. Also, that switch was huge (I later switched it out for a smaller one).

Using the Ping ultrasonic sensor will be fun. Hopefully it will live up to the rave that everyone has been giving it!

On Saturday we searched EVERYWHERE for dual-lock. Dual lock is almost like velcro, except it is plastic and has no wiggle. Ended up getting dual-lock at Staples.

This robot is paper thin!

You can see some more photos of Dogcow Robot’s construction on flickr.

Here are some tips that I would recommend for people going to do something similar:
- Smaller potentiometers, wires, and switches
- Flip the image of the object horizontally when printing the other side
- Use headers or some modular way of connecting the wires so that if the solder or wire breaks, you have the last resort to be able to plug it in to the original connection
- Be able to take things apart
- Have the parts that can come apart be stable (dual-lock)
- Make the programs straight-forward, no fancy programming

More updates later! Woot woot!

Posted in: Projects, Robot.

RoboBrrd is on the Mesh Network!

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, May 9th, 2011

This is just a quick few sentences update to say that RoboBrrd is successfully on my robot mesh network! WOOHOO!

Had some horrible interrupt bugs that were resolved by switching out the main controller board (Arduino Diecimila 328) with an Arduino MEGA.

The communication board is spread out all over RoboBrrd’s back flap, I’m going to solder up the proto screw shield that was designated for RoboBrrd #2 and use it with this RoboBrrd #1 anyway. Since I have accidentally destroyed many servos with RoboBrrd #1, the possibility of a second RoboBrrd might not be realized.

Hopefully I will be able to show you this in action with a short video (unrelated to the tutorial series) tomorrow! The idea is to show RoboBrrd reacting to the PIR sensor, sending a command to the mesh network, and MANOI will be reacting to the command.

I posted some of the code and resources on Github. You can look at it, but please know that I’m going to improve it and make it a lot easier for everyone to use a little later on.

Next few days are going to be crazy, since I need to get RoboBrrd going to enter it into the MAKE robot competition. So much documentation of the design, circuits, and code has to be done!

BTW, I was selected for the WWDC Student Scholarship! Really excited

More details later!

Posted in: Adafruit RoboBrrd.

RoboGlyphs

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Sunday, April 19th, 2009

Lately, I have been trying to come up with ideas that would allow me to do a similar ‘gig’ as last year- when I was accepted to the Stanford program to learn AI.

Some may remember, some may not — some might not even know. Last year I was accepted into the Stanford University Education Program for Gifted Youth under the Artificial Intelligence program. Of course, it wasn’t very affordable. I created these Styrofoam vibrobots called Styrobots. Thanks to numerous efforts of the robotics community as a whole, we raised enough money for me to attend.

This year, I’m going to WWDC and RoboGames. I didn’t apply to any academic programs – aka the CMU Summer Robotics Institute & NASA’s Robotics Academy because they require US Citizenship, or something of the like.

WWDC and RoboGames are both in SF, CA, and around the same time period!

The idea I came up with are RoboGlyphs! They are small laser-etched ‘glyphs’ that can connect with other glyphs. The first three that I will be releasing are the 3 Laws of Robotics.

Here are some photos:

They look absolutely stunning in person!

However, this is not all that I plan to do with the RoboGlyphs. I plan to somehow attach a LED so that it can illuminate the words, so they can be seen in the dark.

I’m hoping to release these on Etsy around the first week of May. Keep an eye out!

Posted in: Art, Other, Projects.