Maker Faire 2012 was a huge success, sounds like a repeat of last year! If you do not know what the Maker Faire is please checkout this link. We had a lot of fun running a workshop for kids called SpinBots! (this is our fifth year). The kids built their own spinBots. Kinda like a robotic Spirograph, spinBots use two markers as legs and a motor that spins the bot around in circles as the pens leave a trail behind showing its progress. Anne and I were kept busy by the non-stop flow of kids for three days straight!
The Thursday before the big weekend was Maker Faire Education day. Maker Faire Education Day is opportunity for schools from near and far to bring their students to a sneak preview of Maker Faire. Over 1600 kids attended and I think we had just as much fun as the kids did! The students had the chance to roam from exhibit to exhibit Talking to the makers and learn about physics, chemistry, technology. It was great having such a huge number of kids through out the day as they are why we are here...
A photo of our workshop was featured on wired.com for makers fair 2011!
The article was titled "Want Kids to Win the Future? Turn Them Into Makers — and Sci-Fi Fans"
It is an interview with Nolan Bushnell about creativity and young people, pretty cool to be part of that!
Here's the link:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/05/maker-faire-nolan-bushnell/
Check out some of the roboteers here!
Click on the above images for info on my other projects or use the index at the top of the page.
My current project, the tentacle arm robot. It is a proof of concept model to figure out how to make a robotic tentacle arm respond to its environment. The final Bot will have many arms and sonar sensors to detect movement.
Close up of the laser cut vertebrae showing the cable system. Notice the slots in the vertebrae of the lower section. These allow the cables that actuate the upper section to pass thru without being tensioned by the movement of the lower section. This was a breakthrough in the design, without which I would not be able to achieve the fluid movement that I am looking for.
Here is a shot of the cables being tensioned manually. The double curve is much more difficult to do but is key to the movement I want the arms to be able to make in the final Bot.
I am now working on the base for the single arm. It consists of four servos and four sonar sensors arranged in a circle. In the test prototype the arm will react to movement around it, hopefully following, pointing at the movement throughout the room. The next bot will have multiple tentacles and more sensors!
You can contact me at: contactatisopoddesigndotcom