Start 'Em Young

For the budding roboteer!

See it here at Amazon.

Ceramic Robot Art

Ceramic Robot Art by artist Michael Klapthor. He has a great website at http://www.mklapthor.com/ with lots of super photos and the name of his site is an allusion to a great piece of robotic's history - as is RUS (Robotics Under the Stole) - see here for a bit of insight.

Klapthor's Facebook is here.

High Tech Birthday

Here is a photo of my high tech birthday for 2016. My favorite part is the note on the box of the wind-up robot! :-)

Curiosity (Maggie) and BB-8 on Facebook

A fun video from NASA, JPL, & the Star Wars team - here on Facebook! This is a screen capture from my Facebook page.

Three Years on Mars!

Unbelievable! Hard to imagine that it has been that long. This is an amazing video recapping Curiosity's three years on Mars.

Ultra Wide Band - Location Within an Inch

The whole story is here at IEEE Spectrum from a company called 5D Robotics.

IEEE Spectrum

IEEE Spectrum is the flagship magazine and website of the IEEE, the world’s largest professional organization devoted to engineering and the applied sciences.The latest in Robotics' News is here.

Robotics Education

Universities with a Robotics' Program*

* From NASA's Robotics Alliance Project

A huge list of the best Robotics' Programs in the United States.

Brown University : http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/robotics/

Cal Poly Pomona : http://www.csupomona.edu/~ece/rover/index.html

Caltech : http://robby.caltech.edu/
Caltech : http://www.coro.caltech.edu/

Carnegie-Mellon University : http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~multirobotlab/ 
Carnegie-Mellon University : http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~cyberscout/
Carnegie-Mellon University : http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/
Carnegie-Mellon University : http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~illah/lab.html

Mini-Robots

This video features mini-robots no bigger than your finger tip scrambling through the rubble of a disaster site to search for victims or to assess damage. That's the vision of engineer Sarah Bergbreiter and her research team at the University of Maryland.

New Arlo Robot Complete Kit from Parallax!

A new kit from Parallax via a tweet from Ken Gracey! Cool!

Great Week...

The flurry of activity on S2 Dot Matrix Printer was my personal contribution to...



But, the posts will continue! Full documentation of the S2 Dot Matrix Printer is on the Parallax Forums at this link.

Lots of good resources and info still at http://www.nationalroboticsweek.org/

Plus, I discovered these folks right next door! http://mississippirobotics.org/
Looks like they are doing some great work!

Robots for iPad

Fun stuff here - http://robotsapp.spectrum.ieee.org/

Resistance Star Wars Playing Cards

Someone gave me two Resistance Star Wars Playing Cards. I just framed them and hung them in my robotics lab space. Left is the Eight of Hearts BB-8 card and right is the Six of Hearts C-3PO, R2-D2, and BB-8 card. Hearts are just right for these droids! 

Googles New Biped

Cool Buttons

Now that I watched the video posted below - I may need to get some of these buttons from Cafe Press. They are here.

Edit: Working on my own design... ;-)  
Update: Okay, how about this? Who wants one? Leave a comment below. Planning stages now!

Soft Robots

OUCH! - Just being moved around is hard on the body! My friend and fellow roboticist, Carol Lynn Hazlett, has been in the hospital and really got bruised up. She is home now thank goodness, but it got me thinking of something I had seen...

This is exactly why real world researchers and roboticists, like these are from CMU, are trying to develop soft robots like Baymax from the Disney/Pixar film Big Hero 6. Here is a fastening video about that subject. Wow!

It is interesting that these roboticist seem sort of soft too - gentle and caring. Oh, and in case you forgot - we love Baymax (and Disney/Pixar at our house!

Whit, Baymax and Thomas at Epcot

Roboteer Head Wear

Roboteer in danger of a sunburn.

Head protected, Showing Customer Loyalty, but a bit Geeky! 

Head protected, Showing Customer Loyalty, Looking Sporty
Thanks erco!

Most of My Time...

I looked down at my chest this morning and it occurred to me that beside my family - these two loves are where I spend most of my time...

It is always family, church or robotics... Not a bad way to spend your time!

S2 LED Dot Matrix Printer Documentation

The S2 LED Dot Matrix Printer Thread

Basic Concept:

FORUMS.PARALLAX.COM

PARALLAX on the S2 LED Dot Matrix Printer

The alignment of Pass One and Pass Two is still not perfect, but here is "PARALLAX" (had to keep up with my friend Carol!) on the Parallax S2 LED Dot Matrix Printer. Photo, Letter Diagram and time-lapsed video attached below. A new thread with all the documentation will be up soon at the Parallax Forums.  Update: This whole process in not documented more fully (with code) over at the Parallax Forums here. Photo exposure time was about 1 minute and 30 seconds.

ΠΟΣΕΙΔΩΝ ΙΙ - Poseidon II v.0 - SoS Greek V

Here is a video and project posted by my friend Nikos on Facebook of a student/faculty project at 1st Vocational Lyceum of Salamis, Greece. They built an undersea rover, named Poseidon II. What amazing work! Must be a fantastic school with some very creative students and dedicated faculty! Check out their extraordinary work!

On it's way...

Nice find on ebay (via the Deal-Hunter aka erco) - http://www.ebay.com/itm/182062970855. This little bot is on its way to my mailbox! Free Shipping - $3.54 U.S. Dollars - HOW can this be done? See post below here.

LED Dot Matrix Printing for Parallax S2 - Update

A little update on LED Dot Matrix Printing for the the Parallax S2 (from here over on the Parallax Forums) and as a follow up to my previous post below. This is all done using the simple GUI Program Maker and a little ingenuity and follows up on all sorts of LED printing started by Carol Lynn Hazlett - see it all on the thread.

As I said on the forum post, Here is the latest new photo, and New Dot Matrix diagram. (I am getting it more dialed in - as I have said the turn is the trickiest part - LED separate pass alignment vertically and horizontally and over the length of the word.) I am working on some other info and full documentation on this and will start a new thread over at the forums and publish it all there. 

For now, enjoy this... This is a good compliment I think to Nikos' S2 Alphabet.

"Bulb Exposure of LED Dot Matrix Printing - About 1 minute long!

Dot Matrix Map of the "HELLO!" Message

Screen-shot of  some of my Dot Matrix Alphabet