Robotics
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There's a really interesting conference in San Francisco, later this month (groan). It's being held in Fort Mason on February 25-27, and covers all aspects of reality computing, whether relating to capture, compute or create: Autodesk is the main organizer of the event, but there are lots of other companies and institutions involved, too. Check out the list of speakers: there are executives and specialists from Autodesk lined up as well as several eminent names from the industry. Here's a quick video giving a sense of what the conference is all about: And in case you're still interested in registering,…
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Last week I spent a morning at SINDEX 2014, which is apparently Switzerland's largest technology exhibition. Its main focus is on industrial electronics and automation: not exactly fields I know a lot about, but ones that I do find to be extremely interesting. There were 400 or so exhibitors, many focused on providing sensors and electrical equipment, others providing complete automation solutions. There was a serious focus on robotics, for instance, something in which regular readers will know I have a strong interest. This post contains a few examples of the robots that were on show. This robot, from Stäubli,…
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I've been getting very interested in the field of autonomous robot navigation, of late. I own a couple of different robots: while I haven't quite gotten around to buying a robotic vacuum cleaner, I've had an autonomous lawn mower for several years, now, and bought a simple LEGO-carrying programmable robot for my kids for Christmas. One of the reasons I find the field of autonomous robot navigation so interesting is that there's a great deal of overlap with the algorithms and techniques needed for 3D reconstruction: robots need to sense their environment – often using photo or video input –…
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Aside from being St. Valentine's Day, Friday is notable as it marks the beginning of the first ever ETHx class, "AMRx – Autonomous Mobile Robots". ETHx is the moniker being used by the prestigious technical institution ETH Zurich for the MOOC courses they're delivering as part of edX. This is exciting: despite the fact I live close enough theoretically to attend classes at ETH Zurich in person, I'm very happy to be able to do so from the comfort of my home. The topic is itself very interesting… the "environment perception" piece alone looks as though it should cover algorithms…
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Robots have been on my mind quite a bit, lately. They were everywhere at last month's Autodesk University, for instance, whether the 3D scanning robot wandering around the conference – and even showing up at the Blogger's Social – Bot & Dolly's impressively choreographed robot at the opening keynote or LEGO Mindstorms in the Exhibit Hall. And Google has been on a crazy buying spree picking up robotics companies – they've apparently acquired at least 8 during the past 12 months, including Bot & Dolly (announced while AU was still in progress, curiously enough) and the maker of the more-than-a-little-scary…
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I'd like to wish a very "Happy New Year" to all readers of the Through the Interface blog. I'm currently still up in the mountains, enjoying a few more days of snow before diving back into work, but thought I'd post a quick message to wish you all the best for the coming year. Over the next few weeks I'll post about some thoughts I've been having about some potential (and hopefully very fun) robotics integrations with AutoCAD – inspired by the very cool Thymio robot that my kids got for Christmas – as well as about my first trip…
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Back in March, I signed up via Code.org to see if I could get help teach basic programming skills to kids. It didn't work out mainly because of my location – Code.org is really focused on the US – but I stayed on their mailing list and have been following their updates with great interest. For those of you who are not familiar with Code.org, it's a resource that's been established to promote computer science education for students. A great example of what's being provided is the Hour of Code, which has been put together for this week's Computer Science…