Robotics

Regional Robotics Competition Tomorrow at UMBC

Frank — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:31:00 GMT

From fellow AISer, Ed Mullin:

Wanna turn your kids into geeks too? Bring them to the FLL Regional robotics competition for students so they can see the fun they could be having. They might even get the urge to join/start a team. The regional tournament is tomorrow. http://www.umbc.edu/fll/
FIRST LEGO League (FLL) is a result of an exciting alliance between FIRST and the LEGO Company. Guided by adult mentors and their own imaginations, FLL students solve real-world engineering challenges, develop important life skills, and learn to make positive contributions to society. FLL provides students age 9-14 with an opportunity to challenge their math and science skills in an internationally recognized competitive environment. FLL combines a hands-on, interactive robotics program with a sports-like atmosphere. Teams of up to 10 players focus on team building, problem solving, creativity, and analytical thinking to develop a well thought out solution to a problem currently facing the world - the Challenge.
First Lego League is an International competition http://www.firstlegoleague.org/

What a great way to get kids interested in science.

More information on the First LEGO League can be found at TechBrick.

Technorati Tags: Robotics,Lego,FLL,UMBC

ActiveNick Talks About Robotics Studio on .NET Rocks

Frank — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:40:00 GMT

Nick Landry (aka ActiveNick) talks about Microsoft Robotics Studio with Carl & Richard on .NET Rocks Show #256 [MP3 | WMA | iPod AAC]

Interesting stuff.

Listen to Nick talk about the visual programming language in Robotics Studio: how you drag and drop services onto a canvas and link them together graphically. Sounds a lot like PopFly

Popfly is a website where you have services represented as blocks. You drag and drop them onto a surface and then link them together. Customization is done by tweaking settings on the objects and the connectors.

Is this the development model for the 21st century?

Here are the links mentioned in the show:

MS Robotics Studio (qrb)
DARPA Autonomous Vehicle Race (qr8)
Lego Mindstorms (qrc)
White Box Robotics PC-Bot (qra)

Technorati tags: Robotics, ActiveNick, Microsoft Robotics Studio, PopFly, SOA

Slides from Last Week's Richmond.NET User Group Meeting

Frank — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:06:00 GMT

I've posted my slide deck from last week's Richmond.NET User Group meeting on SlideShare.

SlideShare is a free service that allows you to upload your presentation and share it online. Right now, they do not support PPTX (PowerPoint 2007), so you'll have to save in good, old PPT or PPS. The site can even understand PDF files.

Slide decks can also be tagged and searched across. There are plenty of good WPF and user experience slides, including this one entitled "The Age of the UX."

My colleague, Russell Stalters, told me about the service and how easy it was to upload documents and embed them in blog posts. He has a lot of presentations up there on the site.

Technorati tags: SlideShare, PowerPoint, PowerPoint 2007, WPF, Richmond VA, Developer, Device Development, Embedded, Tablet PC, Mobile Computing

Sumo Bot Competition Photos

Frank — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:53:00 GMT

Pictures from last night's Sumo Bot competition at the MEDC 2007 Attendee party.

Technorati tags: Robotics, MEDC, MEDC 2007, Las Vegas

Sumo Bot Competition: Final Round

Frank — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:42:00 GMT

Video from the final round of the Sumo Bot Competition at last night's MEDC attendee party.

Technorati tags: Robotics, MEDC, MEDC 2007, Sumo Bot

Video from MEDC: Robot Push-Ups

Frank — Wed, 02 May 2007 10:12:00 GMT

Here's a video of a robot doing push ups. The robot is running Windows Embedded and is controlled via a Windows CE 6 device wirelessly.

There's going to be some more robotics content here at the conference today.

Technorati tags: Robotics, Microsoft, MEDC, MEDC 2007

Practical Uses of the .NET Micro Framework

Frank — Tue, 01 May 2007 17:20:00 GMT

At the .NET Micro Framework session today, they have several different folks come up and talk about what products and services their companies have developed with the Micro Framework.

So far, the topics have been home automation and truck diagnostics. I also heard an interesting phrase: "Car Area Network," which apparently has a bus speed of 500k.

Here's an interesting fact: the Micro Framework has no file system.

Technorati tags: Micro Framework, .NET, MEDC, MEDC 2007, Home Automation

Microsoft Robotics Studio 1.0 Released

Frank — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:25:00 GMT

I blogged about Microsoft's Robotic Studio a few months back.

Now, it's at Version 1.0 and ready for some serious cool stuff.

You can get started easily enough by going through the Microsoft Robotics Studio portal site on MSDN.

It'll be even easier to build your own Wimo.

Technorati tags: Robotics, Microsoft Robotics Studio, MSDN, Robots, Wimo, Wimo NXT

Will Robots Get to Vote?

Frank — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 19:10:00 GMT

A recent study by a government agency in the UK addresses the potential legal, ethical and moral implications of artificially intelligent robots.

While the report did say that these sorts of problems are decades away, they do provide some thought provoking ideas on the nature of "human rights," citizenship and morality.

http://wap.usatoday.com/detail.jsp?key=528965

As an aside, wasn't this the key plot point for a segment in the Animatrix?

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Microsoft Research Videos on the Research Channel

Frank — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 17:57:00 GMT

For a brief period of time, we had Dish Network service at home.

One of the channels that got my attention on the program guide was the Research Channel.

I tuned into it and, much to my delight, there was a seminar on cryptography and steganography other other security related topics.

I was hooked.

Unfortunately, the only place where the dish would get any signals was right on the front of the house, where you get to see the back end of the dish.

Even I thought it was ugly and I'm a total geek, so you know my dish tolerance levels are pretty high.

Fortunately, the research channel has most of their content available online, including this seminar on Extraordinary Computing Experiences and Robots for the Masses: Fiction or Reality.

Technorati tags: Robotics, Research Channel, Cryptography, Microsoft, Steganography, Security Isssues, Dish, Satellite TV