Hey I miss you guys. Hey everyone at CMU. I cant believe the robot that we build is at place where eveyone could see it. That is so cool.

Hey GirlTech interns, I finally got around to pulling the source code for the TicTacToe game you guys wrote from that laptop, cleaned it up a little, wrote some comments and posted them up to this website. You can download the code from the Lectures page here

http://www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/girl-tech/?q=node/167

Let me know if you have any issues or questions. I would suggest you guys read over the code again and try to understand it. Also you still have some work to do in the TTTPlayerAI class to make the computer smarter than it is now (look for the "TODO" parts). You can also expand the game and maybe make it into a Connect-Four game or something similar (way more things to work out there, like the pieces sliding down to the bottom etc). Just play around, experiment and have fun.

Also note that I've included the BioloidArm robot arm code including your favorite Inverse Kinematics math (it's in Armature). See if you can figure out how things are working in there.

G.I.R.L. Tech had our Soft Opening yesterday and it was a big success! *whew*

It wouldn't have been possible had it not been for Lauren and Rebecca slaving away making these awesome cabinets til 4am these past weeks (get some sleep you two) and Lindsay for hammering away at that Interface code and electronics/lighting til it was all integrated (I'll admit it, that last minute lighting idea of yours was genius). Laura did an excellent job saving the days multiple times getting all the equipment (especially getting those incorrectly cut canvas plexis straightened out) and writing up all that documentation. And I can't forget about little Samantha ditching school to come out and represent our interns' work at Soft... Awesome job explaining and presenting it Sam!

The faculty and visitors were very impressed by the project and somewhat more impressed by the interns' tic-tac-toe playing robots than Lynxy... which made Lynxy somewhat jealous (older sibling syndrome and all, I can relate :). We were given tons of valuable feedback that we definitely hope to incorporate in the final exhibit... I particularly loved Brenda's idea of a personality on Lynxy... Pixar's Luxo Jr immediately came to my mind when she was describing how Lynxy could animate. Now I need to think of a way to give her a personality (through keyframed animations) without shredding through her servos too much with all those repetitive actions. Ah a good artsy engineering challenge!

We'd like to Thank all the faculty, students and visitors who came by at Soft and all those times prior to test out our little painting bot. We've still got a lot of work ahead of us to finalize and clean things up for the final grand opening in a few weeks.

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.

Today, we made a smart tic-tac-toe playing game. We talked about the robot. But, we still need to get the board, and make it so the arms can know where to go on the tic tac toe board- by the measuring. It was confusing because we didn't really know what to do for a while, but then it all worked out.

Also, we watched the play testing for the robot arm.

today well it was fun because we split up in to groups and it was the programmers and the mec.people and the mec people where doing something different

from us it was four of our who was the programmers.

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 were introduced to Marek, a soon to be graduate of Carnegie Mellon University's robotics department. He presented his product called Keepon. Keepon is a small robot with no limbs, only two eyes and a nose. It is connected to a base, primarily to serve as a charger and a pathway to control Keepon's movements. Keepon seemed very cute, however, I feel that children would like to see it move around more. A better idea is to have Keepon without it's base so that it can become more interactive with the childrens' movements.
In addition, the interns and I looked at our robot in progress. The arm seems to be very successful in drawing what one would like it to draw. However, I think we need to work on the compression of the marker to the glass so that the image can appear clearer. Moreover, this is a wonderful experience and I enjoy being apart of it.

Today was a good day. Today we met keepor this robot that can dance with you and react what you did. it was pretty cool.

today was long but a man came to visit us today and he had a robot. The robot had no arms nor legs just a head, body,eyes,and nose. It can move and moves with a remote control or by a computer. it was really cute. For something to not have nothing it was interesting.