This week, only Katie and I were able to attend the activities, I hope evreything is ok with all of the YWCA, we miss you! We visited two diffrent places this week. On monday we met this cool guy who does robot desings. He had lots of diffrent ideas. He showed us Rino, a program for creating designs ( whats with the animal names, Rino, Python, Panda?). He also shoed us a few of his ideas and a few all ready created robots. We got to see penbo again, she danced for us, but we did not know who to get her baby. We also saw the original penbo design, it was more penguine like, and aimed to boys more than girls, but it was awsom looking, I think they should also make it into a robot. We saw ideas for plantanimals, they are robotic plants, they sound like they would be an interesting thing to have around. We also learned a good insperation for design, the Beehive, and some coffee!

I loved the robot desings even the ones that did not become real!

On wensday, we went to this place that had big robots that were not so cute and cuddley, but functioning, working, robots that were not just toys. We wernt able to see all of the robots because some were secret government projects. Most of the robot were big and were veical like. Most were used for agricultural purposes, for mining, and other things. One of the back wheels on one of the robots was bigger than me, so I sat inside of it and it was cool! I liked most about wensday, it helped me form a diffrent outlook on robots, all of the robots I (we) saw so far were toys, I liked the toys a lot, but seeing non toy robots helped develop my rational look on robots.

well thats all for now, no ( 'o') on wensday, but there were some at the ETC on monday.

Today I missed 1/2 day of school to come to the soft opening at the ETC! It was a fun day, I got to see some other projects going on at the ETC, and I got to talk about our project... a lot. Some groups of people ( I think they were staff) came and looked at our exibts, Linxy and ( ' 0 ' ). I didn't really talk about Linxy much but I got to play with her!

I explained to people our tic tac toe robots. ( Anthony Daniels was there too! ) I did not know much about what the other mechinanical people did but I talked about programing. I explained how we found the robots range of motion to creat the tic tac toe board. I talked about inverse kenimatics ( when you know the end point and need to know how the robot needs to move, so you create triangles at the angles of the joints and calculate sine and cosine.). I also explaind how we put that information in to python language. When a person was playing the robot arm, I talked about how we programed the computer play. We had to tell the robot the winning possibilites and tell it to check it and stuff. We also needed to give it a strgedy ( who knew tic tac toe was a stratigic game?) We need to work on that some more, I don't think the computer ever won = (. When someone did win, the robotic arm drew a line across the winning points. I explined that the robotic arm can not draw a stright line unless we broke it down in to Interpolations. ( If we did not break it down than it would draw an arc and not line.) With interpolation, each joint move a certian amount of times unsted of all at once, this causes the robot to draw and etch a sketch like line. Thats basicaly how our robotic arms work.

I also talked about the diffrent things we did through out the program so far. I talked about pengo, keepon, the motion lab, and all that fun stuff.

I liked it a lot because it helped me understand my controbution to the project, and what im learning. I didn't know I knew what I knew untill I had to expain it all. I was kinda just like wow I learned stuff. Well, Im glad I did or this would have been a hard day. Today helped me understand the program a lot more. I liked it a lot, more people shold have came.

I didn't spen the whole time talking. We looked at other pepole projects at the ETC. One project we looked at was creating a sketch for a video game. We created a viedo game with capigs ( we wanted pigs but they only had cats, so they made a cat look like a pig) that played hopscotch. Another project we looked at was a video game. It was a game where you needed to use your logic to play spells to beat you oppents. We also looked a few diffrent other projects but this about sums it up.

It was a fun day, im sorry for those who could not leave school.

Maby the pig wasn't in Star Wars, but the other day in girl tech involved piggys, tic tac toe, and Star Wars!

We finished up our tic tac toe game (tic-tac -toe), and it was awsome!!! We pluged in the numbers and wrote some code in python and the robot arms learned how to play tic tac toe (kinda). We played a few practice games to make sure evreything was working out. Piggy got to play tic tac toe. (that were ( ' 0 ' ) comes in). It was a pretty easy day, and it was fun seeing evreything work out.

Star Wars!!!!! We also got to meet this pretty cool dude named Anthony Daniels. He talked with us to find out what we were doing in girl tech. He also talked about robots and stuff. He asked us questions about diffrent stuff going on in girl tech, I hope he got a good idea of whats going on.

For those who may not know who Anothony is, he plays the droid c-3 PO in star wars. The big gold robot. He told us what it was like to be a robot, it was some pretty interesting insight.

Yesterday we worked on our tic-tac-toe playing robot. We had to come up with mesurements for our tic tac toe bored. We had to use guess and check to figure out how far the robot are could move. It was kinda repetitive trying to figure it our but when we finished it was exciting.

We also got to draw on the window with window paint it was fun!!!!!!!!!!

( ' o ' )

Yesterday at girl tech we worked more with our tic tac toe game. We worked on learning how to program a computer player to play a human. It was exciting to see it work out. Well, kind of work. We did not actully play with a board and stuff but ( 'o' ) got to play againts the computer and we saw it on the computer.
We also got to see kids play with our robot. It was cool seeing them have fun with it. there were lots of kids at the etc building this week. Thats about all for now.

Today we visited a motion capture lab. Motion caption is basicaly recording movement and puting onto a digital model. There were I think 12 Inferred camras that picked up signals from shiney silver bubble looking things. The bubble thingys are stratigically placed on the object being recorded. . The inferred camaras see the bubble things and take that information and put it on to a computer. on the computer you see the bubbles as dots and you play connect the dots to make the object more defined. The camras also pick up the movements of the bubbles and record it. The movements are recorded on a graph, the person working on the computer can take the informtion and use it to create an animation.

Before all of the information can be taken from the camras, you need to calibrate the area you are using. You calibrate it using a magic wand that has three shiny bubbles stratigically placed on it. You walk around the are waving the wand so the camras can create a digital model of the area you are using.

Thats basically what we learned today. we got to see short animations that used motion capture to be created.

No ( 'o') 2day. = (

Today we met KEEPON! A small robot that looks like two yellow marshmallows. It helps with child development, and especially helps autistic children. It is so cute. It moves around and bounces and dances. It has cameras in the eyes and a microphone nose. It is used in therapy for autistic kids because it is not complex to look at. Sometimes human faces could be to confusing for autistic kids to look at because of so many things going on, but with Keepon, the child can look at it and not be confused. It helps them learn social behavior. I liked Keepon a lot because of its purpose. I love robots, but when I grow up I want to work with autistic children. It was really cool to get the best of both worlds, A cute little robot, but at the same time helping Autistic kids! I hope Keepon becomes a great success.

We got to play with Keepon too! It is controlled by a wii remote. It is so adorable to watch, and it was fun to move it around. It was fun to poke too. It was squishy!!! Squishy Squishy! I love Keepon, I want to have one of my own!

P.S we saw a piggy today, and it wasn't drawn by me or anyone else!!

TIC-TAC-TOE!!! Today learned how to write a program in python to play tic-tac-toe. We will eventually put the information into our arm and play it. we did get a chance to play tic-tac-toe on the python program, it was cool, but its wired starting from 0 and not 1. we also used inverse kinematics to tell the position of the robotic arm.

The piggy got to play tic-tac-toe!!!

On Wensday, we made hangman in Python. It was fun to do! We did not finish, but we got most of it done. I really like programing and stuff, it cool and fun to do. Befor we split into our groups we talked about what a robot is, and we tried to figure out what some robots were in evreyday life. We also started doing a little bit of math. I love math, but triangles are not the fun part, oh well, its still cool. well, cant wait till monday!

('o')

Today (March 23) we practice Python, a programing program. We went over different programs with in Python. It was fun making nothing do something. Like typing the code on a blank screen and then it actually doing something. I have no exprence in Programing but I think it's cool and I am excited to learn more.

( ' o ' ) lol...