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Who are you?
Arturo Sinclair from United States [2 posts] |
17 year
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First of all this is to thank the people who worked in this amazing piece of software. I imagine everyone who has used it must agree that this is one of the most interesting pieces of the personal robotic puzzle to have come up in a long time. Bravo!
I work at the University of Florida, we have been programing a control system for the SVR-1 (in LabView). Enough to say that is a mini-Darpa-challenge and it has taken us quite a while to get it sort of working. Then yesterday, thanks to a comment on an MSP forum I learned about your program, downloaded it and it worked right of the bat doing everything that we need!!! how great is that?
This weekend I am travelling to Austria (Linz) to attend a workshop on New Media for the entire month. I plan to take your software and demonstrate it to a fabulous group of people. I will document it and let you know. We are preparing a performance involving autonomous robotics at the OK Center for Contemporary Arts in Linz (to coincide with Ars Electronica) next year in July. I am sure Roborealm will be there!
A million thanks again, keep up the great work.
And, oh, yes, who are you!?
Arturo
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Anonymous |
17 year
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Arturo,
Thanks for the nice feedback!
Part of the RoboRealm team's background in robotics spans back to the Mercury Project and the Telegarden which were online robots that could be controlled from a web browser. The Mercury Project allowed end users to steer a robot by clicking on images in their browser and to dig by telling
the robot to release a burst of air from the end effector. Similarly the
Telegarden allowed end users to plant, water and watch their live growing
plants from all over the world ... the Telegarden was somewhat of an art
installation too! The projects are no longer live but are
still an interesting read at the TG archive at
http://www.telegarden.org/tg/.
You can see the Adept arm in the middle of the garden.
We are actually quite familiar with Linz Austria and the Ars Electronica museum as the Telegarden found a longtime home at the Ars Electronica museum many years ago after its initial installation at USC (University of Southern California). It has been quite a while since that exhibit was running so I'm sure things have changed there quite a bit. I wonder if the floor is still that nice blue!?!
We'd be very happy to be re-introduced to the guys over at the OK Center (they probably don't remember the TG anymore) and would be very happy to help you out on any installation that you are working on.
Do you intend to use the SRV-1 robots?
STeven.
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Who are you!
Arturo Sinclair from United States [2 posts] |
17 year
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OMG! so you must be STeve Gentner? no wonder. I bought Goldberg's book (The Robot in the Garden) years ago, where I read about the Telegarden as well as the Mercury project. This book and the work mentioned became a decisive influence in my career, (my background is SFX cinematography), steering me into robotics for performance purposes.
I am sure everyone ever exposed to the Telegarden project remembers it dearly. It meant a lot to those who experienced it first hand as to those of us who watched in amazement at the realization that our evolutionary path was being built a bit at a time.
Here at my institute (Digital Worlds) at UFL we use the SRV to navigate, hopefully autonomously, a small miniature city we call "Fusion City" aka FC (see pictures).
I am the guy with the black cap, with my co-teachers John Maze and Ruth Ron(from Architecture) and our students.
In this pic you can make out the SRV on the bottom right with an LED turned on to track it from an overhead camera. Its position is then sent to our control system and in the background screen you can make out a view of a virtual model of FC live on Google Earth where you can actually track the SRV in "real time".
The virtual model is then sent to an "agent" in the field just outside our building  and the image projected through vision goggles. 
The agent is GPS tracked to synchronize it with the Google Earth and the miniature city event.
My own personal project for the OK Center involves a 5 meter marionette that I hope will interact (autonomously as well) with a live performer. I know I am probably biting more than I can chew, but having people like you sharing your tools and wealth of expertise makes me feel more confident and really really excited.
Cheers
Thanks a mil for your generosity in sharing code, examples and as I been reading giving really detailed answers and explanations to anybody who asks, now, the question is are you a person or have you already transmigrated into a cyborg? :-), where do you find the bandwith?
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