Jimmy's blog

Category: Robotics

  • A machine learning based clock

    I wanted to gain more understanding of machine learning. I learn best by doing and also find that I can fool myself (and others) into thinking I know something by reading a book and watching a couple videos. But until I implement something myself, I don’t really know it. As Richard Feynman said: “what I…

  • The Robot Etudes

    This blog usually functions as a journal for my photography endeavors, but I’m quite excited about this next project and figured it’s somewhat related that I decided to throw it in. For the past three months architects and engineers students at the University of Pennsylvania have been working together on building mechatronic devices (think robots)…

  • A modular robot that is in the New York Times

    This is old news (no pun intended) but I never got the times (pun intended) to write a proper blog post about it. Anyways, CKbot got written up in the New York Times on July 28! Yes I know, that is almost three weeks ago. My buddy from college Graham Roberts is one of the…

  • Techfest

    My lab was invited to come to India to exhibit our CKBots at IIT Bombay’s Techfest. Below are some snapshots as a teaser to the full photo essay. There’s just too much to write here. Some keywords: pollution, technology, Taj Mahal, robots, lasers, traffic, Lake Powai, Sachin, people, lots of people, globalization. To see all…

  • We are #81!

    Discover Magazine listed our Self reAssembly after Explosion demo as the 81st of 100 top technology stories of 2008. http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jan/081 We beat bulletproof paper (#83) but lost to self-healing rubber from oil and pee (#80).

  • Mumbai

    Last Wednesday at 9.30PM terrorists simultaneously strike several luxury hotels and tourist hangouts. They open fire and injure hundreds, then proceed to take scores of hostages. In an editorial in the NYT, Suketa Mehta writes: The terrorists’ message was clear: Stay away from Mumbai or you will get killed. Cricket matches with visiting English and…

  • Pulling an office prank with CKbot

    While working at Willow Garage, Matt and I and some others pulled a prank on our good friend Sachin using Robopong (a machine that shoots ping pong balls) and our CKbot modules. In a nutshell, we created a hatch in the ceiling we could open and close remotely. Through this hatch we could fire ping…

  • CKbot fetches Odwalla

    Willow Garage provides us with free Odwalla juice. The drinks are all different flavors of fruits and vegetables. I like the carrot juice one but most people in the company find that one ‘nasty’. Actually, I think I like all the nasty ones. Anyways, we got CKbot to succesfully fetch us some Odwalla juice from…

  • PR-2

    So I’m interning at this robot start up company called Willow Garage. They are in the process of building a 200 lb. lifesize humanoid robot to do the dishes, cook and clean, etc. In other words, a robotic maid (think Rosie from the Jetsons). I suppose it wasn’t designed for Roshambo.