September 10, 2011

Meeting Date: 
Saturday, September 10, 2011

Class

Today, Martin Mason gave a general introduction to the ROS operating system for robots. Here are a couple articles related to ROS he has published on his personal blog:

 

Business

October class: "connect Leaf robots to ROS" by Alex

November class: "Kinect & Visual Studio" by Thomas Messersmidt

December: "Arduino workshop" by Martin Mason

Show & Tell

Jim showed us a Back-Up Alarm product, that has an aluminum tape, that can be used for a proximity sensor.

He also showed us a clear plastic tape that can be used as a proximity sensor based on capacitive loading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walter Martinez points out that the Stanford AI class start on October 10.

It was also mentioned that there are many good online courses on Khan Academy website.

Walter also talked about a $75 Magnolia board from the website WebUrban.

Martin Laroque mentioned that he is working with a Cal State Fullerton student on an autonomous lawnmower. The student came in touch with him through the NavCom organization, of which Martin is a member.

They now meet in the Fullerton Engineering building (where the RSSC meetings used to take place).


Thomas shows us an example in Visual Studio 2010 Express, that allows using the Kinect. He demonstrated a gesture based interface to move a stick figure:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I forget who brought this Kinect-based robot. It is based on Willow-garage's poor-mans's PR2 robot calledTurtleBot.