Mind Controlled Robots Are Here

Check out this story on robots that can be controlled by thoughts. Mind control devices has often been the topic of sci-fi movies but now it is making its way into reality. This new technology can help paralyzed people gain mobility. I am excited to see this technology advance. Now we just need to be careful to not let this spin out of control and develop into a skynet with the ability to read our thoughts, what a scary thought!

Robotics Fair in Delaware

This weekend I attended a Robotics Fair celebrating National Robotics Week. The event was sponsored by the Forum to Advance Minorities in Engineering (FAME). There was a presentation with a panel of experts followed by a demonstration. The panel was actually very interesting and enjoyable. The panel included Dr. Sunil K. Agrawal (University of Delaware), Dr. Rashmi Kumar (University of Pennsylvania), Dr. Vijay Kumar (University of Pennsylvania), James Sills and Judson Wagner. The panel discussion included everything from a the lack of students in STEM subjects and the exploding demand for STEM graduates to videos of the professors' research.

Dr. Vijay Kumar's presentation was especially interesting. He works mainly with autonomous flying robots. He showed us how he is able to program his flying robots to do flips in the air and menuever through small slits while spinning, which a human would be hard pressed to copy using a remote. He also showed multiple of his robots flying together in interesting patterns without crashing into each other. He even demonstrated them working together to build a structure using magnetic pieces. I was really impressed with all of the research being done now in robotics.

The picture at the top of this post is a bomb disposal unit I got the chance to look at. Its base cost is about $150,000 with an additional $450,000 worth of upgrades. One robot costing $600,000?? I need to start making and selling those suckers.

My triumphant return

I am planning on getting back into robotics. I am working on setting up a robotics club for a local middle school so I can teach kids how to design, build and program robots. I also plan to dust off my old robot (while praying that it still works) and get back into programing it. I’d like to make a basic program where the robot follows a wall and eventually I want to add a video camera.

Look forward to more posts in the coming soon, hopefully there will not be another 2 and half year gap until my next post.

*Robot in picture is not one I built :(

Introduction

Hi my name is Wayne. This blog's purpose is to document progress on my robot projects. I will include pictures, videos, code and descriptions. On occasion I will also write tutorials for parts and sensors that I have worked with to help those who are new to robotics.

Background: I graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in Electrical Engineering. I built my first robot 4 years ago but I haven't had a lot of time to program it. I am currently working on connecting a CMUcam to my carpet rover robot named "The Wanderer". Perhaps with the camera The Wanderer will have something to do other than wonder around a room.

Here is a picture of The Wanderer:

The Wanderer used two continuous rotation servos to move and has a swivel wheel in the back. It has two ultrasonic rangefinders mounted on servos to detect objects in its path. It uses a Javelin microprocessor, programmed in Java, as a brain.