3D Scanning & Rovio

Robot day:

1. Daniel creates a 3D scan of a golf club with a laser and webcam






2. Scott investigates ROS (and application to Rovio)

3. Justin brings back the Rovio




4. Meanwhile the kids rode bikes, drove the golf cart, and watched movies

Neural Interfaces, DARPA, and ROS

Dataczar attended the Neural Interfaces Conference and among all of the very interesting eye and tongue I/O devices, direct neural implant I/O, and memory augmenters (for mice), etc, DARPA presented the 2009 Revolutionizing Prosthetics program. This program has established MODULAR OPEN STANDARDS for prosthetics control. They also made an arm that mimics human sensory and actuation characteristics with direct closed loop control to the brain. That's all well and good. But modular open standards for such devices from the organization that invented the Internet means there will now be a clear path to the interoperability of these devices.

Should this become widely used, an adapter can be added to the Robot Operating System (ROS) and allow arbitrary control of devices from neural I/O. That's exciting because an interface, say, that monitors tongue movements in a paralyzed person for control of a computer mouse can be easily adapted to any other device of arbitrary complexity (like say a Jeep).

Unfortunately I did not get a picture of the paralyzed monkey that had his limbs reanimated by a tinkering scientist.

Here's a nice lady controlling an iPhone with her tongue.



Here's a guy explaining how Utah's electrode array gets the data in and out of the brain.