Really, I always thought transformers are something differen !?! You know i thought they were objects that transforms into robots or vis versa, but take a look:
I thought transformers are something different !?!
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Archiv für den Monat: Januar 2010
Unexpected twist inside
I hope this will never happen to me 🙂
Dennis W. Hong presents RoMeLa
RoMeLa, the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech is currently working on „Robot Evolution Through Intelligent Design“. This means they are taking evolutionary inspired designs and try to adopted them to robotic purpose. Dennis W. Hong, PhD and his students have been creating a lot of really interesting new robots, for example three legged robots, snake like robots or humanoids (e.g. DARwIn). The talk from the TEDxNASA conference, Mr. Hong offers a short overview of their research.
By the way, if you’re wondering about that motto and how „evolution“ can meet „intelligent design“ here comes the answer. Hong tells us:
„Though it has both evolution and intelligent design in the sentence, it has nothing to do with either – „we“ push the boundaries and come up with the next generation robotics (robot evolution) through us doing rigorous research and designing them intelligently (intelligent design). I think it is a clever tag line for our lab.“
Audio Streaming to NXT
„gloomyandy“ (Andy Shaw) has uploaded a video to youtube, showing a Lego Mindstorms NXT brick playing music streamed via bluetooth or USB-cable. Maybe he will make the source-code public? Up to that time, enjoy this video:
Introduction to I2C
I2C is one of the most used electronically data bus that is extremely often used in embedded systems. It is used for attaching sensors, actuators of other subsystems into the system.
Recently i have found a good introduction which includes background knowledge and a HowToUs on www.uchobby.com.
Johnny Chunge Lee´s HMI Projects
Prof. Johnny Chunge Lee is a researcher and currently working for „Microsoft – Applied Sciences“ in Redmond. He has a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction gained at the Carnegie Mellon University on his thesis „Projector-Based Location Discovery and Tracking“ [website].
On his website he has some great projects related to HMI that could also be helpful in robotics.
So for example his experiments on the usage of the WII controlers,
or his projects on Projector Calibration and RFID usage.
Campus Party Europe
Europe is looking for talents! Those who are members of EURON have already read the announcement, those who are not must read now. The Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation is proud to introduce ‘Campus Party Europe.’ This event will be held in Madrid from April 14th to April 18th of 2010, celebrating the Spanish Presidency of the European Union and organized by Asociacion E3 Futura.
For four days, 800 young people from each of the 27 member states of the EU will participate in activities such as conferences, workshops and challenges centred around three knowledge areas: Science (Robotics, Astronomy and Modding), Digital Creativity (Video, Animation, Design, Photography and Blogs) and Innovation (Application development and Security). Travel, accomodation and catering costs will be fully covered by the organizaton!
In order to obtain your invitation, all you have to do is being registered as Campusero (if you still aren’t registered just fill the registration form with your personal data) and attach the information on the project in which you are participating at your “User Card” of the web.
What’s more, the best projects will be shown in the “Projects Forum” which will be held during Campus Party Europe and three of them (one from each area of knowledge: Science, Innovation and Digital Creativity) will be awarded with 3.000 Euros each.
For more information please refer to the official website of the event.
Programming Tutorials and free Mindstorms Software Addons
Before starting this new blog here, i have been collecting Lego Mindstorms related material in my public Wuala Group „ Robotics, Robotik, Mindstorms, Asuro, Yeti, more (www.nxtreme.net)“.
I also uploaded Tutorials for different programming languages.
Feel free to join this group.
Six-Legged Walking Machines
Wheel based movements are well studied and have several advantages. They are simple, energy efficient and do need less expert knowledge. Nevertheless they are not the universal solution. Alternatives like flying, crawling or walking are often more suitable for a specific application but they are really hard do develop and even more hard in terms of usage.
One interesting approach of how to use legs by making usage of neuronal networks is shown by „Biologically inspired six-legged walking machine AMOS-WD06“ (Author: Poramate Manoonpong). This project shows an usage of a Hexapod that gets controlled by a neuronal network, how to set it up and how to train it. The results are quit awesome.
Another interesting example of leg usage is given by the A-Pod, a hexapod by Kare Halvorsen which mimics an ant. This black ant which is quite capable of doing natural looking maneuvers. It supports moments of its legs, head, thorax and abdomen, plus it has a claw to perform mobile manipulation. In special the high flexibility and maneuverability in addition to the possibility of mobile manipulation makes this project extremely interesting.
Robotic Song: The Humans are Dead
The Group „Flight of the Conchords“ performed a extrem funny songs called „The Humans are Dead“.
Just take a look 😉 and find out the relation to robotics and that song.