Thanksgiving Turkeys

I remember making these with Nilla wafers and chocolate covered cherries in elementary school and my mom and grandma loving them so much that we made one for every spot at our Thanksgiving table that year.  Happy Thanksgiving!

A Month at the Museum

Over the summer, my favorite museum, The Museum of Science and Industry, has been advertising it's contest for "Month at the Museum 2."  If you've been living under a rock (or locked up in a science museum) and haven't seen all the ads, this contest is to be a roommate / science-spokesman who lives in the museum for 30 straight days, exploring, learning, and generally trying to convince people that science is cool.

I decided to apply for this on a whim at the last, last minute, which meant that I spent the entire weekend (with the due date the following Monday) scripting and filming a 60 second video about why people would want to come to MSI to see me and what I would do to make kids fall in love with science.

In my day job, I get to do a lot of high tech stuff, and I think it's worthwhile to show how fun and cool it can be to be an engineer or scientist.

These are the people who make our way of life possible, and kids should be as excited for these professions as they are about being a rock star or professional athlete.  If you need more convincing, enjoy my application video:

Teaching Robots to Punch

Well, you can't give a software engineer a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots set for Christmas and expect him to be satisfied just pushing the little manual levers. I mean, it even requires convincing someone else to play with you.

I was amazed to see that a quick Google search turned up only 1 other instance of anyone trying to automate a Rock em Sock em game, so I set off to try it for myself.

Once I managed to pry the sonic welded pieces apart, the Red Rocker's torso was almost a perfect fit for Pololu micro DC motors, so giving my Red Rocker some muscle was fairly straight forward.

This setup let me attach the motors straight to the bicep, which definitely feels like a much cleaner engineering solution than just putting servos onto the existing levers.  I put together a quick demo to prove that the motors pack a big enough punch.  Enjoy the 'gun show'.

Getting into Volunteering

A couple years ago at a New Years Eve party, I was introduced to a friend of a friend who happens to work at my favorite museum, The Museum of Science and Industry.  She and I had a great conversation about robots, which is an area the museum wants to do more in and for which I have a personal and professional affinity.

Fast forward to present day and this all led to me getting to come in to the museum to play with one of their newest robots.  MSI obtained several Aldebaran Nao robots to feature in the Fast Forward exhibit.  These little guys are pretty advanced when it comes to commercial, off-the-shelf, humanoid robotics, so getting to spend a day programming one was a great opportunity.

With any luck this experience will enable me to get more involved with the museum as a volunteer, supporting some of these robots and finding unique ways to make use of them in addition to their current exhibit.  I've included a rough cut below of the proof of concept I threw together today, including speech recognition, machine vision, and a little bit of animatronics.

Fun with Money

I'm in DC with some free time, so I decided to make an artistic dream of mine come true.  Tour groups thought that this was hilarious.  I'm amazed that no one sells side by side frames like this.

Robots vs. Humans Soccer

Anyone who has frequented my blog entries knows that I am one of the biggest robot-enthusiasts around. That's why I was so excited to get a chance to attend a lecture at the Museum of Science and Industry given recently by Dr. Minoru Asada, a top researcher in modern robotics and one of the driving forces behind Robocup, and Mr. Ken Nagasaka, of Panasonic Factory Solutions of America.



Mr. Nagasaka addressed the revolution going on in hardware and how in just a few years, we've reduced huge factory-sized manufacturing lines down to the size of the just a room or a cell. This was an interesting presentation for me, as I have done a good deal of work with Panasonic PLC's, and Mr. Nagasaka gave a good history the whole company.

The really nerdy fun part from my point of view though was Dr. Asada's presentation. He showed many examples of the work being done in his lab, where the process of teaching robots to learn various tasks is shedding new light on human development.

He also presented several videos from Robocup, which, if you haven't checked in on in a while, has gotten a lot closer to its goal of challenging a human soccer team. This is another inspiring venture that basically is Dr. Asada's way of challenging electrical, mechanical, and software developers to work together in many technological frontiers, including AI, machine vision, and balance.

In all, the day was a great opportunity to see a glimpse of what the future of robotics and technology has in store. It is a reminder that often times the work we do as engineers is part of a bigger picture, where business, manufacturing, and everyday life are made better by automation technology.