Hey DIYers! I'm excited to announce the next meeting: What: Phoenix DIY 7 When: Thursday, April 17th 7.00 pm Where: DAR (Digital Art Ranch), ASU, on the SE corner of Myrtle & University Drive, Tempe, 85281 [map: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=33.421045,-111.937332&spn=0.002628,0.005193&t=h&z=18&msid=100075186827850218896.00044a76b8fce1be4a4c9) Enter through the south-facing door; there is a little silver bell you can ring – somebody will come and let you in. There is parking south and west of the building + in the public parking basement at the north end of Myrtle. Bring snacks to share! This event is free and open to the public. This month's presenters: The A.L.E.R.T. team: Natalie Freed, Camilla Jensen, Byron Lahey & Alex Kim, plus Winslow Burleson and Patrick Lu. The Active Learning Environment with Robotics Tangibles (ALERT) system provides an entertaining and easy to use method of interacting with and programming a robot. A user simply places a sign in the path of the robot. The robot sees the sign and obeys the directions given by the sign. Our robot recognizes "command tiles" placed in view of its mounted camera and acts accordingly ("turn left," "stop," "go in the direction of the arrow", "repeat last command," etc.) The commands mapped to each symbol can vary with the type, position, and orientation of the symbol. The idea is to teach basic programming and spatial reasoning concepts in a tangible way. We've created challenge scenarios in which participants have to plan where to place the tiles in order to complete a particular task. The A.L.E.R.T. system makes use of the Create robot from iRobot (the company behind the Roomba vacuuming robot), the open source computer vision symbol recognition system Reactivision, and Hacking Roomba's Java programming platform. In less than a month the A.L.E.R.T. team will demo this project at Maker Faire. For that event we need some activities that will mesmerize both kids and adults. We will divide all the participants into groups. Each group will have a robot to work with. We will make our pre-programmed fiducials (the icons that can be observed by the Reactivision) and the software available to you on your laptops. We've got the toolbox – you've got the brains – come and let your creativity loose! Using our existing command tiles – or you can come up with new commands – the teams will develop cool game/learning scenarios. By the end of the evening each team will demo their concept. That can be done via a fully functioning demo, "wizard-of-Oz" demo, (demo using people as robots, etc.) For anyone who wants to get a head start with the tools check the links below to find the essential software and more reference to our project. We will try to have a full package of the necessary software, visual icons and sample code available for you by the time we see you. Note: No prior experience with robotics or programming is necessary. If you like logic puzzles or toys, you're good to go! More info on the project: http://byronlahey.com/ActiveRobot/ http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ http://reactable.iua.upf.edu/?software http://hackingroomba.com/code/ Hope to see you there! Becky Stern
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