Near vis IR capable camera

Mike Lamberty successfully removed the filter that prevents near visible spectrum infrared light from getting to the charge couple device in a webcam. Hoping to film Mike for a tutorial soon!

First class today.

Andy Lee led our first class today along with some assistance from Matt Everingham. He went over some of the basics of robotics for the group. Hopefully we'll have some footage worth posting up soon.

SHDH Lightening Talk: Open Robotics

Here is a link to Andy's presentation at SHDH 38

White board photo 1

Setting up our robot lab.

Pictures of our shared space.


Hunter Soper, LT Leske, Andy Lee, Michael Lamberty. I badged and walked in Andy, Dave, TZ, and Hunter today. We rearranged the space pretty extensively. Not that anything is permanent. Our space is pretty well suited to our pursuits. Finally some pictures.

Workspace and Materials quest update.

We have a huge space to work in. Warehouse style. High ceilings, large windows composed of many small panes.

Possible access to a cache of VEX robotics parts has also been set aside as development material.

We are cleaning up and organizing the space today.

Golden!

Things are coming along nicely.

We have some lab space and some equipment.

We have a prestigious scientist to partner with.

I'll try to get into writing meaningful update posts weekly if not daily.

Telepresence technology is less brown.

A robot system that gives the user the sensation of being in the location the robot is in would reduce the need to travel. Replacing telephones for the purpose of meetings and even tourism. Imagine taking a gondola ride for 60 EU in Venice by inhabiting a robot already there for that purpose.

Grandma can visit her grandkids, boards of directors can attend meetings from across the globe, scientists can collaborate. And all with some small fraction of the energy and time cost associated with old world physical travel paradigms (flying, driving etc).

Moving mass around is very costly. Moving a consciousness? Considerably less so. If the capabilities of the occupied machine are sufficient it will be a cheaper, safer, "less brown" alternative to standard travel techniques.

The key is going to be making this technology ubiquitous. All those dead land line phones need to be replaced with telepresences.

Why an open platform?

There are lots of common robots which only need to be designed and developed once and then they can go into mass production. There are loads more rovers, uav's, and submersibles which could be used in the arts or sciences which would help us expand the sphere of our knowledge. A greater goal of this project is to create a space where one can come to learn about how to create projects to achieve goals with the aid of a smart mobile machine.

Tools we like.

Android: the open source handset. Open and hackable.
http://developer.android.com/guide/index.html

Processing: an awesome open source tool built by Ben Fry to prototype applications quickly and easily. It's built on wiring.
http://processing.org/

Arduino: A great prototyping environment for programming avr microcontrolers. If you don't know about these it's time to stop hiding in that cave you've been in.
http://www.arduino.cc/

Modkit : A visual programming environment for arduino
http://www.modk.it/

Amarino: a new tool for interfacing between arduinos and android handsets
http://www.amarino-toolkit.net/

What is an open robot?

   Today many robots are starting to become common in our everyday lives. In many homes across the country one could find machines some would call robots which clean floors wash our clothes and dishes. Most  new cars have more computers than the average house. It's not uncommon to carry computers in form of laptops or smart phones with us when we walk out the door to stay connected in this connected age. We send robots to other planets to explore for longer than we could hope to live on such a planet. Unmanned vehicles go deep into the ocean to drill for oil and sometimes to try to fix the plumbing when something goes afoul. Tele-robotic planes are already flown unmanned from locations all over the world.

Increasingly it is our belief that we should all have access to develop these machines. There will be a system for open development and collaboration of how should these machines be built and work together in the best ways possible.

The open robot platform is now in development. Many of the pieces are already here. It is being built with open source tools and can be developed, hacked, altered, improved. Open Robot is our attempt to build and synthesis a nervous system which could be useful to any machine that moves through and intelligently interacts with it's environment.

Open Robot.