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, we met Keepon, had the arm draw pictures, and saw the lights that will be on the machine.
Keepon is a little robot that interacts with people and is being used to help autistic children. He was a cool robot and was fun to make move. He was, also, very squishy!
Then, we went to the group's room, and drew pictures for the robot arm to draw. It was cool but it couldn't really draw the piggy cause the paint had issues. But, it was still fun to do, and was interesting to see the lights.

We played tic tac toe today, after sitting around and learning how to make it. Before that we went over inverse kinematics, again, to show where that arm needs to bring the paint.

...In the games the piggy, ('o'), won many of the tic tac toe games.

Yesterday the team met with a group of our new interns (Sasha, Malika, Erin, Katie, and Breonna) at the ETC for the first time. Rebecca led us through some getting-to-know you games, Drew (our ETC director) gave us a tour, and then we all went to the project room to eat snacks and talk about our plans for the Children's Museum robot painter exhibit. It was a whirlwind tour and a ton of information—now the girls have had a chance to see what we do here at the ETC and start thinking about how they want to get involved.

The girls have lots of interests in addition to robotics. For example, Malika really enjoys taking photos, so you'll probably see her photography up on this website soon. Katie shadows a veterinarian, which makes me think she may have a special interest in the ETC's AIBO, a robotic dog that is programmed to respond to its environment and simulate learning behavior (mimicking the way a real dog can be trained to perform tricks). Breonna loves to cook and wants to become a chef, which got made me wondering whether anyone uses robotics in cooking. So I went on Google and searched for pittsburgh robot cook. I found a news story about Hyperactive Technologies, creators of "Hyperactive Bob," a system that uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to manage the kitchens at restaurants. I was a little surprised to find robotic-related technologies used with cooking at all—I'm amazed that there's a company focused on this just a 15-minute drive away.

We're meeting up with our interns again tomorrow. Not all of our interns have joined us yet, so keep an eye out for new additions to our Intern team members page!

Logo of the Girl Scouts of America.