Well, this video could use some editing but here it is. A totally useless application demonstrating the vision capabilities of LabVIEW. Watch a camera mounted on an X-Y motion platform tracking the movements of a goldfish in a fish tank.
Archive for June, 2008
I just downloaded the free Spore creature creator. I created my first creature, took some photos of it and even uploaded a video to Youtube directly from the software. All of the above in just half an hour of playing with it. It’s pretty slick.
I gotta hand it to the creators for coming up with imaginative names for all the varied body parts available in the game. Names such as: Pincernaut, Crockisser, Terrorpin, Gobsterclaw and Nubknuckle. Just to name a few. The physics of the creations is pretty realistic. If you have kids, put them in front of this and watch them learn.
There is a new Mindstorms NXT book currently in production by Michael Gasperi that focuses on using LabVIEW to program your robot. I’m excited about this for obvious reasons. I’m a strong advocate of using LabVIEW in just about everything and of course the popular Lego robot is no exception. NXT-G has LabVIEW at the core, but it has a very limited subset of the entire language.
LabVIEW for MINDSTORMS was written by an expert in LEGO MINDSTORMS with the cooperation of National Instruments to create the definitive guide to programming the NXT using LabVIEW. See Author Bio
Using the robotic construction projects included with the retail Lego Mindstorms NXT product the author shows how advanced tools from the LabVIEW Toolkit can be used to build more versatile and complicated designs. Several new projects of a more laboratory or industrial nature are also included to show computer control with the NXT as a data acquisition and control device. Advanced NXT topics like Data Files, Bluetooth, and I2C communications are also treated as well as how to connect the NXT to the internet with a web server.
The book is further set apart by its packaging. Enclosed with each new book is a CD containing the LabVIEW 8.5 demo version, the LabVIEW Toolkit, and all the programming examples from the book. Everything you need to enhance and extend your robotic design.
Michael Gasperi is an authority and a well known author of several LEGO MINDSTORMS books. His popular website, LEGO Mindstorms NXT/RCX Sensor Input Page, homebrew sensor chapters in the Extreme MINDSTORMS, and his Extreme NXT book have guided hundreds people through the process of building hardware extensions and programming in alternative languages.
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I always do what Google tells me to do. A few weeks ago my Google reader suggested that I should follow the robotgrrl blog RSS feed. So I did. This blog is about robotics from a Montreal, Canada High School girls point of view. Erin loves robots. So much so that she applied to the Stanford University EPGY summer program - Artificial Intelligence. After she got accepted, she announced that funding for her tuition would come from the sale of styrobots. These are little hand made robots that combine vibrobot “technology”, painted Styrofoam cups and a cute name. Erin is selling these on Etsy. Erin is heading for the final stretch deadline to collect $1200 before June 13th. You can help. Go to her site and donate to a good cause. Not sure if Erin will make any more Styrobots for her Etsy shop but keep checking there. After the recent exposure she got on dvice, I don’t think she will be able to keep up with demand. Watch the video to see what a Styrobot looks like.
Update: 6 New Styrobots have been built.
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