Observe The Banana

The students at the Department of Technological Studies at Ohio Northern University are using techniques similar to industrial automatic dynamic bin picking applications (grabbing parts from moving bins) to make a KUKA KR3 industrial robot play air hockey.

They have the arm mounted in an inverted position on a gantry over an air hockey table with a Point Grey Flea2 camera which snaps 30 images per second of the entire table. These images are transmitted to a computer where image distortions are removed and VisionPro machine vision software distinguishes the puck and transfers its x,y position to another algorithm on the computer. This program keeps track of current and previous positions and attempts to calculate the puck’s trajectory and determine where the arm should move to strike it.

Since the arm can only move at up two 2 meters per second, which is much slower than a human player, they have devised a “puck striker” which the robot holds. The striker is like a regular air hockey paddle split in to four quadrants which can rapidly expand outwards at 16 times per second to strike the puck more effectively than the arm alone could accomplish. They designed the striker in CATIA V5 and then printed it on a rapid prototype 3D printer.

They also found that the standard side walls of an air hockey table are constructed from MDF (medium density fiberboard) which has some flex and deforms slightly when hit by the puck. This causes the the puck to bounce off the walls at a different angle than they could accurately predict with a basic “angle of incidence equals angle of deflection” algorithm. To solve this problem they replaced the side rails of the table with aluminum which deflects the puck in a more predictable manner.

When the player scores, the puck is routed out the bottom of the robot’s goal onto a small conveyor belt which carries it under the table back to the human to put back into play. It looks like the robot currently plays mainly defense, but the students hope to continue developing the software with more AI to play more effectively. Then it should be ready to fill in and help satisfy your late night air hockey needs after your roommate passes out. After that, maybe their next project will be a robot that can play quarters.

Here is a short video of a student presentation of the project. Unfortunately it doesn’t show much actual hockey playing by the robot, which was still awaiting more advanced software at the time of the presentation.

[Link] to project home page with more technical details and images.

Update:

Apparently an engineering services company called Nuvation has made a very successful version of an air hockey playing robot that is able to beat all comers (or at least wins 90% of games). Here is a nice video interview with the CEO of Nuvation explaining their system. One interesting point is that the robot vision system not only tracks the current position, speed and direction of the puck, but then makes intelligent guesses on its future position predicting up to three bounces.

The robot, by the way, does live up to its advance billing, according to Kanellos. In watching it for a half an hour at the Freescale Technology Forum, the bot never lost a goal and scored many. Granted, none of the players he witnessed were off-duty roofing contractors tanked up on a 12-pack of Keystone Lager, but some players were pretty good nonetheless. The most eerie moments come when the robot would block a shot without even moving. It mocks you with its stillness.

Crave via TechEBlog

I guess watching time lapse video of rocks can be interesting after all, you just have to wait long enough

Das Rad

We just watched the movie Chronos from Netflix.

The description said, “Chronos is a wonder — it’s the first nonverbal, nonfiction movie filmed entirely in time-lapse photography.”

I thought, “time lapse photography, that should be cool. Plants shooting out of the ground, storm clouds massing, swirling and dissipating, the sun and moon chasing each other across the sky as days fly by. There are lots things in nature that look way cool when sped up through time lapse photography.”

Unfortunately this movie had none of those things. Instead they had, almost exclusively, rocks, statues, monuments and buildings. What do all these things have in common? Nothing moves! Staring at 5 minutes of a stone formation compressed from 5 hours is really no more interesting than 5 minutes of standard film would have been. And since the time compressed was only of hours, not days or weeks, you did not see erosion, the sun racing across the sky, or clouds swirling by, instead you saw a shadow . . . creeping . . . slowly creeping . . . slightly faster than usual, but still creeping, across the terrain. -yawn- . Then a sunbeam sweeping . . . again only slightly faster, across a room. This movie showed a lot of very beautiful scenery, yet it was painfully boring to watch. Just past the mid-point they had some city traffic scenes, which were kinda cool, then some pedestrian traffic streaking through a train station that was really cool. Then back to buildings with nothing moving at all. The good news was that this film was only 45 minutes long, much more and I would have just stopped it. I actually watched large portions of it with the DVD player set on double speed, and that made it tolerable. It even helped the “music” sound decent. Based on the reviews on Netflix I can see that some people loved this movie, I guess if you could slow down enough (meditation maybe? or heavy sedation more likely) it could be a beautiful thing, but for me and B it was waste of time.

If you are going to make time lapse video of rocks, you need to wait long enough to make it interesting.

I have been enjoying playing Lego Star Wars II with my son on the PC. He has a version for his Nintendo DS, but the little screen is hard on my old eyes. If you haven’t seen it, this is actually quite a fun game that lets you play out all the major story line scenes from the Star Wars movies, all as a LEGO minifigure. Whenever the Evil Emperor (Palpatine/Darth Sidious) is in play you hear this periodic evil cackling laugh sound.   The funny thing is for some reason it always reminds me of our current Vice President. Maybe it’s Jon Stewart’s impersonation of him that does it. So now we have taken to just calling him Evil Emperor Cheney in the game.

Please excuse my rather primitive graphics work, didn’t have any decent software tools on this game pc.

In case a successful descent and landing of the Phoenix Lander on to the surface of Mars wasn’t exciting enough, they actually managed to photograph it from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter while it came down.  Here is a photo of it hanging from its parachute.

Here is a Zoom:

This is really amazing, or as the Planetary Society puts it, “a speeding bullet photographed by a speeding bullet.” I wonder if they knew they could do this successfully, or if they pointed the camera, hoped for the best and just got really lucky. Either way, very cool!

Here is a shot from NASA showing the lander on the surface, again from the Orbiter

[Link to OMG!! Parachute!!!! Photo!!!!!]

NASA Phoenix Lander Home Page

They have erected a small black fabric fence running along the side of the university campus near us. I naively thought it was a silt fence, used to control sediment flow and erosion from the road construction project beginning there. My son B has corrected me. He informs me that it is actually a “physicist fence” which is used to keep the physicists on campus and prevent them from roaming free in the community and administering random physics lessons to unsuspecting citizens. I am lucky to have an expert around to inform me of these things.

On May 24, Panasonic showed off the capacity of their Evolta AA batteries by using them to power a cute little mascot robot as he scaled a 530 meter cliff in the Grand Canyon. The grueling climb took the little (17 cm, 130g) robot 6 hours and 45 minutes and was recognized by the Guinness Book as the longest of its kind.  I, for one, would like to state that our robot overlords should not be made to scale tall cliffs to get out of canyons.

Read [Via Pink Tentacle] [Via Engadget]

Todays YouTube Banana sighting - Banana Phone! Catchy tune, clever lyrics, and bananas; what’s not to love?

Update: Okay, I just learned that is a Raffi song from 1994 which has been the basis of quite a few internet videos, but I still like this sped up version more than several others I have seen. Enjoy

Earlier today I ran across a fun little video about a new animatronic WALL E robot that will soon be roaming Disney Parks. I kind of like WALL E, although those big round eyes are a bit too Disney cute. Since I have not seen the movie yet, only some fun trailers, I don’t know if he will earn a place in my heart, but he got me thinking about some of the other robots, both real and imagined, that seem to have touched me on an emotional level. So, even though there are already so many robot lists on the net, after the jump is my own Top 5 Favorite Robots

(click for more…)

I have just finished reading John Varley’s excellent trilogy and I would recommend it highly to science fictions readers looking for something new and intelligent to read, especially fans of Robert Heinlein whose style Varley seems to emulate well. Here is my take on Rolling Thunder, and you can read my comments on the others on my books page.

As I finished the third Varley book in the Red Thunder, Red Lightening, Rolling Thunder Trilogy I was wishing there was a fourth. His writing is intelligent and his characters are complex and interesting. This one picks up with the daughter, Podkayne, of Ray from Red Lightening, and the granddaughter of Manny from Red Thunder. It follows her adventures in the Martian Navy Music Corps as she get caught up in new dangers unfolding on Europa. The comparison to Robert Heinlein is just as valid in this book as the previous. Like some of Heinlein’s works this book has large sections with very little story developments and instead just shares the thoughts and feelings of the main character while educating the reader about planets, gravity and space travel trivia. At times all the factoids can come across as the author showing off his knowledge (or research more likely) but overall it works well and when the story does pick up it goes in a major way. Also like Heinlein, Varley can’t resist a few good jabs at organized religion, making fun of the rapurists who pop up every time there is a major disaster.  I also got a good chuckle out of Podkayne’s take on intelligent design while explaining why she doesn’t want to have kids with an imaginary conversation with her vagina:

ME: Babies are so cute!
MS V: Honey, you need to get a tape measure. Measure me, then measure a baby’s head. Then … you do the math
ME: Oh.
Not a pretty picture. In Homeland America there is an accepted church dogma called “intelligent design”. [...] And if you need another example, tell me why a human baby should be expected to emerge from an opening that can’t accommodate a lemon without discomfort. Design maybe, but not intelligent. If that was God’s intent, then God is a dunce.

This book didn’t wrap up nice and neat at the end, as the main character even admits many stories do, but is still satisfying in it’s conclusion. There is definitely lots and lots of open doors for a next book.

Hmmmm so many good choices, which one should I choose?

B and I had a very nice ride on the bike trail down to the park where we discovered a choir of frogs around the swimming hole turned nature pond. They seemed less shy than usual and allowed me to get up close and personal and take lots of pictures. I ended up with 50 shots of frogs - in the water, next to the water, bulging throat, on top of each other, etc. After some difficult weeding I got it down to 16 nice shots and a very short movie with sound which I put in a flickr set for all to enjoy.

Enjoy!

Here is a rather odd Banana sighting from YouTube.

This dark German techno tells the tale of a young man und his appealing attributes.

Beware the milky pirate!

Q. Dear Banana, I just bought a new house and I want to replace the top floor carpet right away as it is old and ugly and dark. Looking at carpet choices. Any recommendations? You’ve had the same carpeting for years, no? Do you recall anything about what sort it is? I really liked the wool in our last place, and there’s a place here that has it for actually quite cheap. It feels nice, its a renewable resource, very durable/long-lasting…but…(big but) it stains pretty easily. There’s a new carpet from Dupont called Smartstrands made out of corn fiber, renewable…stain resistant guarantee, supposedly durable, very soft feeling… a bit more expensive…in the medium price range. Anyway, if you happen to have any recommendations, let me know!
-Confused in Colorado
A. First of all, let me say that I am glad that you asked that question. We understand that carpet is a very important issue to all Americans today, and is something we here all take very seriously. As matter of fact, and not very people know this about me, carpet is an issue very near and dear to my heart as I myself had carpet in my home when I was just a young child growing up in the great state of Indiana, the backbone of the heartland of America. I have personally pledged to form a panel of experts to select a committee to further research this issue until we get to the heart of this important matter. We will not stop until we have reached an answer that is both just and fair to all Americans, in all walks of life. No longer is the carpet issue just an issue for the working man, this issue cuts to core of what makes us all Americans, and should be addressed at the highest levels. I personally will travel to the carpet centers of this great nation to find the truth behind the plush pile. We need a strong and courageous leader who is unafraid to lift the corners of that berber mat, even to peak under that mildew resistant padding, and reveal the true flooring that supports this great nation, as it has since the time of brave founding fathers. In these troubled times we cannot afford to rest our bare feet upon a cold wooden floor, and neither can we afford to trip over the deceptive folds of a cheap polyester pile. Straw mats may have been good enough for our struggling ancestors, yet we cannot accept that for our great nation today. Today we call upon the strength of wool, the honesty of cotton and the justice of true stain resistance for all Americans. For when even one American has to suffer the injustice of a stained floor covering, are not we all lessened as a great nation? Our founding fathers suffered the chilled feet of hard wood floors, so that we today can rise, together, as the greatest nation in the world, barefoot, upon the plush pile that is our true birthright as Americans!! As a nation we have room in hearts to embrace equally all colors and fibers of quality floor coverings. Let us not turn our gaze away from the honesty of wool, while equally embracing the bravery of stain resistance! Our national carpet policy must be firm, yet fair. It must be soft, yet resilient. Brightly colored, and yet stain resistant! We can no more afford to divide this great country between those with Stainmaster, verse those those with Smartstrands, any more that we could turn away from those choosing the simple truths of cut pile verse those who walk among us on luxurious deep shag! Now is the time for all true Americans to join hands, and walk hand in hand, barefoot, on the luxurious carpet of truth, justice and the American way!

VOTE BANANA IN ‘08 !!

oh wait a second, did you say carpet? ohhhhhhhh carpet. hmmm. nope, sorry, I don’t know anything at all about carpet….

I just discovered you can get your daily dose of childhood joy with Calvin and Hobbes over at calvinandhobbes.com where everyday they re-release another days strip. They are in order so you follow the story lines, and if you are so inclined you can even order fancy reprints. Go check it out, and embrace your inner tiger.

Yesterday we had an absolutely beautiful sunny Minnesota spring day. I was lucky enough to be able to take advantage of it by heading out for a sail on our little local lake. I have to get in my sailing early in the summer before the lake fills up with seaweed and it is like sailing in jello. I have an O’day Widgeon 12ft day sailer which I leave beached at a friends’ backyard on the lake. This time I did remember to bring my rubber boots to keep my feet out the smelly mush along the shore, but forgot my big sponge to sop out the rain water and tree droppings from the cockpit. That’s okay, my pants soaked up most of it from the seats. I enjoyed a wonderful sail around the lake while trying to figure out the wacky wind patterns and make it around the little island and back. If you have never sailed in a small lake in Minnesota you may not know that the winds tend to be very gusty and uneven and come from 12 different directions depending on where you are on the lake. One moment I am drifting along, the next the little boat surges forward and heels over in a gust, then just as quickly drops into another hole in the wind and falls back flat. I can be in irons with the sails flapping, cruising along on a beam reach, then broad reach, then back in irons (oooo sailor talk) without ever changing direction. Looking across the lake you can even see the little patchwork areas of high wind roaming around across the surface of the lake. It does add a little excitement, as I really didn’t want to take a swim in the cold green water, and while I technically know how to right a small capsized sailboat it has been many many years since I have done it, and never with this boat. Watching the clouds, listening to the geese and ducks announce my arrival, and calculating my next tack to avoid the shallows and make it around the island, I had to stop and appreciate that life could be worse.

Now here is a guy with some mad skillz on an excavator. Watch as he carefully (partially) undresses the rather brave women using a large Case tracked excavator with (what I think is) a dangle demolition grapple. Appears to be from Italian television. Apparantly “scommettiamo che…?” translates to “We bet that…?”




Stripped by a Mechanical Shovel! - video powered by Metacafe


B: Why do astronauts wear those bulky suits when they go out on an EVA?

T: Ummmm, to protect them from the extreme cold of space?

B: Then why don’t they just bring a space heater?

bidumpbump

Looks like those clever engineers over at Toyota took the next logical step and put together a talented quartet of their musician robots. The robots are Harry on trumpet, Dave on trumpet, Chuck on tuba , and Ritchie on drums. (Sadly it looks like one of the trumpet players is still in a wheel chair from that unfortunate accident after their last gig. Had a little too much to drink and tried jump a speeding Prius). Songs played include: “The Theme of Lupin III”, “Moonlight Serenade”, “Stompin ‘at the Savoy”, and “A train to go”.

I would like to find more technical details on how these guys work, like what kind of “lips” do they have, and are they listening to each other play to synchronize? I could definitely see this kind of thing catching on for entertainment on cruise ships or in theme parks. No more trouble with the band eating all the food or getting carried away at the open bar. Of course, then I wonder how long until the musicians unions start complaining?

TechEBlog » Feature: Toyota’s Robot Quartet Perform in Concert

Lately I find myself wondering, if I was going to time travel back to the year 1800 in North America, what could I take with me to use in the place of currency to trade for goods? The tricky part is, ideally I would like to take advantage of inflation to increase the value of my money. For instance, $1 in the year 1800 had the purchasing power of around $14 in the year 2000 (http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/). So if I could bring back currency from the year 2000, it would greatly increase in purchasing power from its face value. The problem is of course, I can not bring back modern currency because it is, well, modern. What I need is something that I can bring back that will not stand out as inappropriate and draw attention to me as a time traveler.
The choice of some basic precious metal like gold immediately comes to mind, and while it would work, it unfortunately loses its modern higher value when brought into the past, effectively undoing the advantage. The price of an ounce of gold in December 2000 was around $275 (http://www.finfacts.ie/Private/curency/goldmarketprice.htm), in 1800 that same ounce of gold would sell for about $19. That $19 of 1800 money had the purchasing power of about $170 of 2000 money, so you come out behind.
So perhaps what I should be looking for instead is some basic commodity that is cheap and plentiful in modern times, but was more scarce and valuable in 1800. Maybe even something that can more easily made to a high quality today, like perhaps iron or steel. I am not sure of the current and past prices of steel, and while there might be an advantage to be had on industrial scales, it is not something that could be easily carried and traded at the general store for basic supplies (is it?). Another possible contender would be salt. I have heard that it was sometimes used as a currency in the past. Let’s see, according to http://www.clarkemuseum.com/html/salt_works.html before refrigeration salt was used for preserving meat, and during the early parts of the Civil War the north blockaded salt shipments from England from reaching the south, forcing the the creation of new and expensive means of harvesting salt from springs. It states “Salt prices escalated so high, that workers were paid in salt rather than money. Prices rose from $1.25 per bushel of 50 pounds in 1861 to $50 by the end of the war.” These time periods are a little later target than my 1800, but may still be relevant. I see that a 50lb bag of fine sea salt goes for about $11 wholesale currently, so that might be a reasonable option, if not a little bulky. (As an aside, a good history of salt can be found at http://www.saltinstitute.org/38.html)
So other that salt, what other good options might there be that have not thought of? Maybe something more compact? How about modern metal hand tools? I think they are relatively cheap and high quality, if you chose carefully to avoid items that would be out of place in the past. You can buy some nice knives pretty cheap these days, but stainless steel wasn’t invent until the 1900’s. I wonder how a 1800 merchant would react to stainless steel? Blue Jeans were not invented until the 1870’s, maybe some other clothing items, or even just some good unbleached cotton fabric? I poked around http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/ at other mineral price histories (thought they only go back to 1900) and although I didn’t read every one (there are lots) it looks like most have only gone up in value.
Please let me know your ideas. Something that has dropped in value significantly, that would not be out of place in 1800. I chose 1800 somewhat randomly and I think that the answers would change dramatically for other time periods, or geographic locations.

OK, this is weird, this guy not only built a cool machine to shoot 3.5″ floppy disks (which isn’t really so weird), but then made a wacky bizarre video about it. “…transfer files effortlessly to your computer, with extreme prejudice”. “Also effective against squirrels, vegans, clowns, hippies, street urchins, girl scouts, and more!” And I never knew that using a CD to transfer data could be so hazardous.
Enjoy!

I like sailboats, I like robots, so naturally I was pleased to find this story about sailing robots. The Times of London reports that seven robotic sailing craft will race across the Atlantic Ocean in October 2008. One of them, ‘Pinta the robot sailing boat,’ has been designed at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. Pinta is expected to sail for three months at a maximum speed of four knots (about 4.6 mph or 7.4 kilometers per hour). Its designers hope the Pinta will become the first robot to cross an ocean using only wind power. Here is a quote from Mark Neal, Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Aberystwyth University.

“This is the first time anybody has attempted to sail across any ocean with an automated boat. The big issue in robotics at the moment is longevity and flexibility in a complicated environment. Something that can survive for two to three months completely unassisted while doing something interesting is a major challenge. If it does get there I will be seriously cheerful. It will open up all the oceans to environmental monitoring by robots.”

This is a cool thing. Giving it some thought, it seems like it could be really tricky managing conventional fabric sails automatically, so many ways to lines to tangle or get caught in unpredictable ways. I guess it is not surprising then to see the robot boat in this picture appears to be using a vertical wing type of sail. The real question is, will they program them to talk like pirates? “Avast ye scurvey dogs, that does not compute!” or maybe “Arrrr mateys, me hard drive be full!”

Over at Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends he has more details and lots of good links.

Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends via Slashdot

I know people have been hacking together small video transmitter systems into RC planes for years now, but here is a prepackaged system that puts together all the parts and pieces you need into one nice bundle. It has a small color camera with integrated transmitter, video receiver and video goggles with light blocking screen around the edge. At $549 it is not cheap, but could be loads of fun, especially if you fly over any dramatic scenery. Seems like a good thing for a RC club or group to buy and share. One of the most excited parts is the soon to be available options for a OSD (On Screen Display) module which adds things like  altitude, heading, speed and direction to home to your display. An even fancier “DragonOSD” will add a scrolling compass and autopilot functions. There will even be a pan/tilt unit available which will allow you to look around in different directions. That should provide a much greater flying experience by allowing you to look out the side to keep the horizon in view during high banking turns.

Heck, one of these would even be fun on RC cars and boats too!

Follow the link through to the Hobby Lobby product page for a fun video demonstration.

Pilot View FPV 2400 First Person Video from Hobby Lobby

Once they get that robot orchestra made, it looks like they will have someone to conduct. Asimo, that cute little guy from Honda, will be guest conducting the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in a performance of “Impossible Dream.” Along with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Asimo will open a special concert performance for young people in Detroit on May 13.

From DeviceGuru

May 14 Update

Apparantly the performance went well. Here is a video