I am on the Board of Directors of The Robot Group Inc. The board tries to keep everyone out of trouble. Sometimes we are successful.
My day job is software design. I program in a variety of computer languages. I currently work for North Shore Circuit Design in Austin, Texas.
I served as the editor for our weekly newsletter The Robot Group PULSE for about four years. I recently started publishing the PULSE newsletter again with the first new issue dated January of 1998. I put out a version of the newsletter when there seems to be enough “new”s. We hope to get those on the web again sometime.
Dweebvision Telepresence Robot:
I built the group’s first telpresence bot called Dweebvision. It has (yes it is still working) a Fisher Price Pixelvison camera attached to a 900MHz. audio / video transmitter. Dweeb sends back live video and sound. The automatic audio gain control in the Pixelvison camera works perfectly – reducing the audio while the unit is driving around and the noisy plastic gear motors are on and increases the microphone sensitivity when the motor noise stops. The chassis is made out of an “after Christmas” special 4 wheel drive truck from Radio Shack. The remote control for steering the base is on ~27 MHz. and offers no interference for the 900 MHz. audio video transmitter. The unit runs for about 4 1/2 hours on one set of alkiline batteries. I added a xenon strobe to Dweeb for safety because all kids want to do with it is drive up behind someone and have them trip over the robot. Dweeb has been used in countless demonstrations over the years. I found attaching the camera and video transmitter with rubber bands and velcro was the way to go. Anything less flexable was trashed in no time. With rubber bands and velcro I simply pick up the “big chunks” of the robot after it has been stepped on and mash them back into place. Most schools have walls of enameled brick and Dweeb gives a great demo when driven between desk legs in nearby classrooms. Dweeb is small and travels in a cardbord file box to school demos. Dweebvision was built, overnight, before Robofest III, after collecting all the parts over the period of a few months. It gets updated, at times, with a night vision camera and has been used to scout out problems under an ice rink and look for pets under houses. Dweeb is a telepresence device and is run by a remote operator. It has no on-board microprocessor or brain. When I was in school we called people with no apparent brain and a head filled only with that which was put there by others, a “Dweeb”.
The Megabot Army :
When we give demos at schools, the kids always ask about a robot kit. Robots get expensive very quickly. The Megabot Army was an attempt to build a 6 foot tall robot out of regular cardboard you would fold up something like you assemble a cardbord file box. Norman Annal did much of the design which was fed into AutoCAD. The output file was used to drive a CNC prototype box cutter at Capitol Container in Buda TX. just south of Austin. Capitol Container cut about a dozen of the robot kits for us and seveal have been assembled and used in various displays. The nice thing about having the drawings in AutoCAD is that we can adjust the size easily. One 3 foot tall version of the Megabot was built. I need help on this project. It has been in the attic since Robofest 7. Many thanks to Capitol Container – those folks can make anything out of cardboard.
Robot Mobile Platform 1 :
Dweebvison was great but had limited payload capacity so, with the help of others, I built a larger platform with a payload capacity of greater than 300 pounds. The base is powered by two electric wheel chair motors and a custom motor controller. The motor controller, designed by Vadim Konradi, is microprocessor controlled, features a Proportional, Integral, Derivative(PID) loop algorithm and drives the motors with pulse width modulation through a custom dual H-Bridge. The control loop is closed useing optical encoders attached to the wheel chair motors via a flexible coupling. MP1 is controlled by sending ASCII commands to the Motorola 68HC11 based controller. This is currently done using a remote control computer running the Linux operating system to read a joystick and send commands via a pair of radio MODEMs to the MP1. Audio and video are sent back using the Dweebvison 900 MHz. RF link. The audio is captured by the sound card and the video is captured using a video frame grabber in the Linux box. The Linux video frame grabber device driver was written by Carlos Puchol. The captured video is displayed in real time in an X-Window on the Linux console. A key improvement over Dweebvision is the control data, and audio / video telemetry are in digital form and ripe for further manipulation on the Linux box. I am currently upgrading the Linux hardware platform as well as moving to 802.11b wireless networking to take the place of the old radio MODEMs. The Robot Brain project described below is being developed to provide a better brain for the MP1. I hope to have some photos up on the WEB soon.
The Robot Brain :
The Robot Brain project is large project with the goal of providing a platform to test various robot control theories. It is in it’s early stages but conisists of an ever growing number of Linux and NetBSD based computers networked together. The collection of rack mount computers are strapped together via ethernet to form the fixed brain for various mobile robot bases. We currently working on expanding the “agent” based software that is running on this growing “Society” of machines . I am convinced that interesting things can be done with the concept of “agents” introduced by Marvin Minsky in his book “The Society of Mind”. This is a project that I plan to work on for as long as I am around. I need all the help I can get and many friends and members of The Robot Group have already contributed greatly to the project and I owe them my thanks.
Check the RobotBrain link for the current status of the project.
Early Robot Group BBS :
I was the system administrator for the group’s BBS system called “BOCK” circa BW. (Before the web) BOCK was one side of a twin UNIX server that once consisted of systems “SHINER” and “BOCK”. The names came from the Bock beer brewed by independent Texas brewery, Shiner. Drink up.
Stuff besides robotics :
Outside the Lab
I enjoy Sparky, backpacking, sailing, SCUBA diving and world travel.
Amateur Radio Operator KD5MFW
I am an an active amateur radio operator, call sign KD5MFW.
I work with the ARCHES program in Austin and Travis County, providing voice and packet (data) links for area hospitals. This work is supported by Travis County ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service)and is activated, upon the request, of the Office of Emergency Management for Austin and Travis County.
If there is a storm in the area, some of our Sky Warn trained storm chasers are out – night or day, sending in reports.
We also do Landing Zone training with the local Starflight crews. In 5 – 7 minutes the Starflight paramedics can fly an injured person to an area hospital but need a safe place to land and make the pickup.
With others, I maintain a digipeater digital radio link repeater as a resource for local emergency communications.
[Image and text originally from http://wiki.therobotgroup.org/wiki/GlennCurrie]