Jan 10, 2009

Meeting Date: 
Saturday, January 10, 2009

These minutes are also available in PDF format.

 

Don Fears   

Club Mascot 

 

10:00 Class 

Text to Speech (TTS) with Professor Martin Mason 

Professor Mason presented an interesting class and demonstration on the history of text to speech. Here is a write-up on his talking dog.  Here is more information on phonemes and visemes.

 

Treasure's Report 

Treasurer collected yearly dues: $10. 

Total: in account: $269.70. 

 

New Business 

Proposal for improvements to web site:   

•  Forum for club 

•  Blog 

•  Membership blog. 

•  Put a links between yahoo and RSSC club and Leaf 

Classes Scheduled for 2009 

•  Feb:    Alex Brown  "mobile bases"

•  March:   Professor Mason    "Speech"

•  April:    Thomas M.  "Using servos in your robot" - Building Robots the Easy Way"

•  May:    TBD  "RoboRealm"   

•  June:      Jeff  "Intro to python"   

Competitions: 

•  Jan:    Paul  www.roboworks.com. Meeting site in Downy. Mobile bases (3rd Saturday) 

•  Feb:   Mini sumo competition. Paralax-Bobot/sumo 

•  April:    Line following? 

•  June:      Hallway competition   

•  Aug:.    Magellan large football field competition nav between cones. (Seattle Robotics) 

Proposals 

•  Poll for classes interest and offerings. 

•  Family and friends robot fair/pot luck 

•  Guest speakers. 

•  Online forum linked to web site 

•  RSSC blog 

Show and Tell: 

Alex Brown 

     
 
1.  Alex presented Rocky’s new RC capability: controlled with RC. Read joysticks with DirectX.   
 
2.  Presented a robot battery monitor with auto shutoff. Board under $10. When voltage gets too low (11 v.) battery is cut. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Presented a large motor for the Leaf robot for propelling a base. Matsushi (Herbock and Redmond) with encoder built in. $60. 150 inch pounds of torque. 12-24 volts. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emil Valkov:   

Presented robot tracking in 3D with RoboRealm. He set up a three degree of freedom robotic arm. He put three red dots for RoboRealm to see. Program was written in C++. Two cameras were mounted side-by-side like a pair of eyes. He used another red dot on a stick as a target and moved it along as the robot arm tracked the target. It shows a lot of promise. 

 

 

 

Thomas Messerschmidt:   

Robot Hands. He demo'ed his robot hand which had articulated fingers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steven Gentner (founder of RoboRealm):   

Steve presented two robots that were given to him as gifts. He used web sniffing to bring video from these robots into RoboRealm.   

 

 

Spykee is a kit robot that looks like Jonny 5. It has a differential drive. It is meant as a Skype enabled robot. One drives it around and interacts with people through the robot. Spykee comes with one with camera. It communicates over 802.11. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

   Rovio (Wowee) is similar to Spykee. It is open API, web based. It works in any location. It is not good in the dark. It uses an IR beacon for docking. 

 

 

Professor Martin Mason: Presented a roving robotic blimp made by one of his students: