Visit by Dr Thomas Sterling.
On the Morning of October 18, the Discovery Lab had the pleasure of demonstrating our main project, the Telebot, to Dr Thomas Sterling. Dr Sterling is a PhD graduate from MIT and is the current Executive Associate Director and Chief Scientis of CREST at IU. Dr Sterling’s many accomplishments include “Arnaud and Edwards Endowed Professor”,”Hertz Foundation Fellowship” (1980) and “Gordon Bell Prize for Price Performance” (1997). He came to FIU to give a talk on Advanced Parallel Execution Semantics for Exascale Computing and took a few minutes to visit the Discovery Lab. Dr Sterling was very impressed with the possible applications of the Telebot on the field, as well as with the feat of creating such a system on its own. He mentioned his interest in following the project’s development on its later stages. We hope to be able to meet him later on to update him on our progress.
Sources:
Dr Sterling FIU Presentation
http://www.cis.fiu.edu/events/view/?e=198
Dr Sterling IU website
http://www.soic.indiana.edu/people/profiles/sterling-thomas.shtml
College of Engineering Research Day
On September 26th, the Discovery Lab had the opportunity to present several of our projects on the Engineering Campus on the very first Research Day. The event was hosted by the College of Engineering and the Applied Research Center (ARC) and was attended by Pres. Rosenberg himself. Pres Rosenberg had the chance to see The SocialBot, and the Telebot Project first hand and was very impressed by our work. Pres Rosenberg was specially impressed with the SocialBot and commended the many possible uses.
Official Event Article
Easton LaChappelle visits the Discovery Lab
The Discovery Lab had the pleasure of having Easton LaChappelle working with us here at the lab for a week. Easton LaChappelle is a High School student from Colorado who has quite some experience in the field of animatronics. He had the opportunity to show his research to president Obama in the third annual White House Science Fair. His arm control designs are very ingenious and his understanding of robotics helped us further our own research. Easton had just returned from an internship at NASA when he came to the Discovery Lab. He had been working on the mechanical design of a teleoperated robotic arm, which is part of the work we do here at the Discovery Lab. Even after such a trip, he was amazed with our work on the Telebot, and was eager to help us. Althought short, his visit to the Discovery Lab gave us a different perspective on the idea of robotic Telepresence and provided us with inspiration for the future of the Telebot.
links:
http://www.gizmag.com/easton-lachappelle-3d-printed-prosthetic/28685/
Create Your Own Outcome: Easton LaChappelle Reinvents the Conventional Prosthesis
Baxter Demo @ the Discovery Lab
During last week, the Discovery Lab had a demonstration of Baxter, a robot by Rethink Robotics, meant to aid in industrial productions. The machine is a human sized robot, with two robotic arms with adaptable ends for different object sizes and shapes. It is incredibly easy to teach it new movements and has great versatility. Baxter has a ton of sensors for safety reasons that allow him to do things like sensing when a person is touching his arms and allow them to fully move them without resistance. He also has an ingenious interface where he nods or gives the user a confused look depending if he understood the commands or not. The Discovery Lab was considering to obtain one such machine for applications within the Telebot, but the end of that idea is still unclear. When all is placed into account, Baxter is a great improvement in the world of robotics.
Tapestry Workshop – Discovery Lab Tour
As part of the Tapestry Workshop hosted at FIU, the attendees received a tour of the Discovery Lab. The high school teachers were able to see a quick demonstration of some of the prototypes here as well as a full explanation of most of the projects. The participants recorded video of the machines and some even took pictures with the Telebot prototype. The atendees were most impressed with the air Aquarium project and the Telebot for their size and capabilities. Although it was a quick presentation, the participants were able to learn much about the Discovery Lab’s work here at FIU.
Gui and Database Seminar
For the last day of presentations, we had Cynthia Tope presenting her work with the Graphic User Interface (GUI) and the Database System for the Telebot. Cynthia explained with great detail the features of the GUI and even demonstrated some of the control features of the system administrators. She also explained the heavy security methods that will be implemented.
The past two weeks have been packed with much information about the Telebot as the Lab members can handle. In the near future we expect to start a recruitment process, during which we will be presenting to the upcoming members our work so that they can choose the team they would like to work with. Keep checking the website for more information
Kalman Filter and Vision Control (Closed Door Seminar)
For the third day of Seminars, it was the turn of Michael Waddele and Irvin Cardenas to present their work. It started with Michael explaining the process of his adapted Kalman Filter for the Arms Motion team. He explained the detailed process and its recursive method while writing it on the whiteboard instead of showing it on a PowerPoint given the mathematical nature of his presentation. His presentation was followed by Irvin’s presentation on Vision Control. Irvin depicted the problems him and his team have worked to solve within the Vision Control system. He also went on to explain the basic Properties and Formulas of your average video and techniques on how to speed a video stream. There is only one presentation left for the next seminar, where Cynthia Tope will be talking about the Telebot interface and its databases.
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