Brushing the Cat Remotely with a Robot Avatar  

I've released the "finished" version of my Robot Avatar project. I use a treadmill, Wiimotes, Kinect, HMD, NAO, and ROS to experience the reality of the robot and control it. I use the interface to remotely brush my cat Lotus. My wife Asami helped keep him calm and in place.

But actually I realized it's not finished. I need to add audio streaming to the mix. And soon I will move to Paris and will have the opportunity to tweak using this interface cross-continental to interact with my in-laws back in Japan. I also have some new ideas about the distant future of this interface...

I still need to get around updating the robots section of my website to include more details about the teleoperation project... But for now you can check out the source at Sourceforge if you are curious.

The video was successful in the press. I am hoping to see more hits than the original Kinect video I made. There were some very nice write-ups in IEEE Automation Blog, Daily Mail, Physorg, Popular Science, Huffington Post, CNet, Wall Street Journal, and Engadget to name a few. A google news search showed results in 10+ languages.

So much news...  

The Kinect teleoperation was a huge success. It took 3rd place in the Willow Garage competition. It started with Veltrobot doing some pushups and ended with NAO navigating a room and using a knife.

The first video was a big hit and got mentioned in tons of news outlets, notably: Engadget, Kotaku, Joystiq, BotJunkie, New Scientist, SF Gate, Singularity Hub, IEEE Spectrum Automation, and Popular Science

I continued to improve the system and did some contests and videos of Robotic Ikebana (Kondo Athlete Cup) and Robot Dubstep Dancing (RobotJapan 1) featuring both Veltrobot and NAO. The perfect music for the latter was provided by Omega, an awesome remix of Painting the Prototype's 8bitstyl3. The lego stair climber even made a special appearance once.

I did the dance again even better at this year's RoboGames and took 8 medals there for Best in Show, Humanoid Freestyle, and 6 Autonomous humanoid competitions. My YouTube channel, and iofreak's channel as well as Robot's Dreams all have videos of this.

NAO interacts with humans...  

I recently took NAO to a party, he seemed to enjoy himself!

The program running is intended to provoke human interaction with an emotional dimension. NAO does this by reacting to stimuli such as motion and sound. He also reacts to touch, being moved, and having his arms moved. The idea is to initially attract the human to NAO, then get the human to touch NAO, and finally NAO rewards them with additional unexpected interaction. It was a complete success.

Veltrobot Kinect Teleoperation  

I recently got my robot to be controlled with a Microsoft Kinect sensor for the XBox 360. Check out the video on my site or on YouTube!

Willow Garage is having a contest for Kinect style sensors too. My entry is here. Wish me luck!

And, I have been featured in Robots Dreams here and here!

Accepted to NAO Developer Program! - Please Donate  

I have been accepted into the NAO Developer Program!

I would like to thank Robots Dreams for the providing the invitation.

Participating in this program should be a key stepping stone in my robot career.

It costs an arm and a leg though! Please help me make my dream come true by donating here.

New Grippers Installed on Veltrobot  

I was recently donated a pair of cool robot grippers from Robots Dreams.

Here are the results.

The miniature servos used to control the hands use Kondo's ICS protocol over the Roboard's half-duplex ttl uart, rather than PWM like all the other servos. Roboard does not provide a library for this but I have it mostly working and will release the code soon.

Audit of WIFI Cards and Linux Compatibility on the Roboard  

Information regarding 802.11n Mini PCI WIFI cards and their compatibility with the Roboard and Linux has been posted here under the Veltrobot page.

Pictures of Earthdance 2010 at Black Water Falls Posted  

The last time I was in America I had the fortune to attend Earthdance at Black Water Falls. Here's some pictures of it in the gallery.

Included are shots featuring the global Prayer for Peace, DJ Nod, Androcell, Aligning Minds, Dragon, and Suit and Tie Guy.

Veltrobot ROS Repository Released!  

I'm pleased to announce the public release of the Veltrop ROS Repository. It's far from complete, but it provides a good starting point for those using a Roboard with humanoid robots.

More information about Veltrobot here.

Site Downtime  

Sorry that my site has been down lately. It's been a rough month!

First, my local computer's HD crashes, which had a new version of the site that hadn't been uploaded yet. Of course, when I recover the drive one of the two directories that were lost contained my website. And of course, that was the only copy of the new stuff. All my local backups were even older than what was on the server.

Two days after the crash I've set my local computer back up and I'm ready to download my site from the server. Conveniently, the server's neighbor had a hardware failure the night before. The neighbor server contained a more important website, which meant that my server's hard drive got swapped out in favor of it's neighbor's. So then I didn't have access to my site for a week as we fixed it's neighbor.

After regaining access I managed to download a copy. One week later, my server's hardware fails! (In the same manor as it's neighbor had. Reliable MTBF ;)

So, roughly another week has gone by and now my server is finally up and running again too, and I have pieced my site back together. It turned out that my server's HD had also been corrupted at some point, and the copy that I downloaded was bad. Had to reencode movies, fix file timestamps...

And the week before this whole thing happened was spent fixing HD problems in a customers computer at work!

Veltrobot Info Updated  

Some new pics and vids of the newly named Veltrobot.

I have also created the Veltrop ROS Repository project on SourceForge to host the ROS code that I am developing on the Roboard for the KHR. I should be ready to post some code within a month.

Robotics info updated.  

Many updates including:

• 4 new videos of the KHR-1HV. Also on YouTube.
• RoboCom software improved and available to download.
• UART information for Kondo products available.
• Hardware changes such as a final head and new feet.
• Initial site (videos, pictures) for new KHR-1HV + Roboard + ROS project.

Robot Face Tracking Video Uploaded  

Just uploaded a video of the KHR-1HV doing some face tracking.

Available here on my site, or here on YouTube.

KHR-1HV Humanoid Robot Page Uploaded  

I have been working on this robot since last November.

Features Include:

• Stereo Vision
• Gyro and Acceleration Sensors
• Bluetooth Communication
• Radio Control

Check it out here in the robotics section.

Mt. Fuji Climb  

Fuji Sengen Shrine. Night photography under a full moon. And of course the sunrise. A panoramic shot of the sunrise is included.

A lot of time went into these. Captured with my new Tamron 18-270 lens. Up on the Gallery page.

Changes to panoramic pages  

Panoramic images now have a smaller preview image above them which fits within the screen. A link was added to open the full size image in a new window. Then maximize the window for best viewing.

New Panoramic Photo Album  

New panoramic photos of views from my new place in Hachioji, Tokyo.

Up on the Gallery page.

More snowboarding  

More Snowboarding

New Snowboarding in Japan Info  

Lot's of new info on the Japan Snowboarding page.

New Photo Album and Updates  

Theres a new photo album of a gecko that was on the outside of my blackened glass bedroom window. I've finished stitching some panoramics of the view from my new place, those will be up soon.

Also updated the site to display many little Twitter, etc. widgets on the right side of the Front page. And Facebook now automatically displays my Front page feed with pictures.

The story behind the creation of my Lego Stair Climber is finished on the Robotics page. I hope to get some video of my new humanoid robot up there soon.

VLC Multithreaded Batch Transcoder (Windows)  

Here's a script to help encoding many files for your iPhone, iPod, PSP, etc.

It needs minor editing to work, but it should be possible for anyone to use...

Get it at the software page.

Nintendo Family Basic  

I completed setting up the Nintendo Family Basic section of the software page.

There's some programming help, video, images, and links with more info.

Long Time No See  

Over three months and no updates to the site. Well...

I have completed my previous job teaching English in Katsunuma, moved to Tokyo and now develop 3D visualization software for a CT scanner.

There's a few new photo albums up so check them out!

For those of you following Wiiji, sit tight. Good things are on the horizon.

Fujikiri Matsuri Pictures  

I thought I lived in a quiet mountain area, but this festival unleashed a frenzy!

Wiiji Software Released  

I've just released software which allows you to use Wii remotes easily on the Mac!

Katsunuma Wine and Grape Festival 2007  

From the yearly festival in Katsununma, Japan. There are pictures of the flaming gate and its surrounding fireworks.

So... no pictures of the drinking part of the festival. I took some pictures of the many booths of the festival in the previous year, so I'll post those eventually.

Gross Dam Photos  

Here's some photos I took 5 years ago at Gross Dam near Boulder, Colorado. They have some nice colors.

Koshu City International Day  

New photos in the gallery of the Koshu city International Day.

You'd expect that to mean there'd be international things to see. But it was actually foreign people doing Japanese things.

Tateyama and Tsurugidake Photos  

The better photos from a hike I took up Tateyama and Tsurugidake have been uploaded to the gallery. There's some nice panoramic shots. This hike took us from Nagano to Toyama prefectures and lasted 2 days.

The 360 degree panoramic stitching turned out nice so I think I should make some sort of panoramic viewer in Flash. They don't fit into my gallery's format very well as they are.

Akakura Snowboarding, Updates  

I wrote up a quick guide to the good riding spots at Akakura Kanko in Niigata, Japan. It's on the snowboarding page.

The gallery format for individual picture views has been improved as well, and I fixed a couple of broken links here and there.

Art Page Up  

Check out the new art page!

There is only one sketch from Boulder for now, I hope to find some other material soon. Luckily for those of you who like to criticize art I found some photos of [nearly] the same view I was trying to draw.

Unrelated: I removed some pictures of student work that I had taken. Though it was funny to see the bad words they wrote into my blank comic worksheet, they are going to be looking at this site.

Stair Climbing Robot Back-Story  

I've been writing up the history of how I made the stair climbing robot on the robotics page.

It's pretty long, but interesting to see how a lot of seemingly unrelated stuff all came together in the end.

The story is still not completed, maybe about half done so far.

New Animal Photos Up, etc.  

I added animal photos to the gallery. Also added photos of some of my students' work. And, I updated the Only in Japan photos.

RSS Added, etc.  

Upon request, I have added an RSS feed based on this page. Thanks Matt! And when I add new photo albums to the gallery, I'll be able to display their thumbnail to the left.

Finally, I got pictures and video of my stair climbing robot up on the Robotics page.

Absolutely huge updates.

I added a snowboarding page. I'm going to put guides up for going off-piste in Japan. I'll have videos online too. I started a YouTube account, but I won't be embedding the YouTube videos into this site. I'll put them up with another player.

Also, the navigation bar now actually tells you what page you are on. And the CSS continues to be improved.

I added another photo gallery of Katsunuma. This time from the winter.

Also, I started my robotics page, but it's still empty for now.

The site has been updated to work with Google Analytics.

New photo albums up. Old albums saw some corrections, too.

Third feature for today

Photo pages now display aperture/exposure related information in the footer.

Woohoo, two new features in one day.

Now you can view the gallery page as sorted by either the dates that the photos were taken, or by the dates that the albums were last modified.

Another (pointless, but) cool update to the site. The above header image will change for each new session on this site. On the gallery page: I was thinking of making it so a mouse roll-over of an album would change the header to a random, cropped preview of the album... but unless I time-consumingly cached each preview on your computer beforehand, it would be laggy as it uploads the image to you real-time. On the other hand, it would give the header image an actual functional purpose. Is it worth doing?

Please email me and let me know if the layout of this site should be changed.

New photos have gone up!