Blog Entry

Dorkbot

I'm overloaded on other stuff at the moment, so no fancy write-up this time. Once again, it was cool to sit in on. I ran away pretty quickly at the end because I was so hungry.

Sumo Robots

• Started in Japan 20 years ago
• Moved to North America about 10 years ago
• Different classes of sizes/weight/etc...
• Best 2 out of 3
• Often start from a kit -- but more fun to build your own
  • Motor + wheels
  • Microcontroller + software
  • Sensors to detect edge, opponent
  • Batteries
• Tricks and ingenuity to figure out what works best in the ring
  
• Links
  • http://vancouverroboticsclub.org
  • http://robotroom.com

Hacking the human

• Steve DiPaola
• Associate professor @ SFU
• http://dipaolo.org
• Can we create new expression systems by modeling living/cognitive
• Parameterize a knowledge space -- communicate emotions compactly
• Explore some space -- PCA
• Build up complex conceptions from the base set of reproduceable elements of the space
• Build cross-parameterizations between different sets of expressions
• Similar to PostScript
  • Revolution of desktop publishing
  • Set of primitives to describe 2D images
• Just because we show it to you doesn't make it real

My thoughts

• How universal are these metaphors?
• Can these really map to this space as precisely as necessary to make this happen?
• Can computers explore instead of optimize?
• Can interestingness become an optimality condition?

Crash course in UBC EngPhys

• Overview of projects in UBC engineering physics program
  • Robot competitions
  • Wall plotting system
  • Props to Brightside
  • Flying rotary unit
  • Optical mouse as skateboard speedometer