Skip to main content

NI Week '07 - Part 1 of ?

By
As some of you have noticed, Jim, Chris, myself (and a whole lot of other people) attended NI Week '07, the showcase event for National Instruments... and, a year after the NXT launch, still one of the places to see the MINDSTORMS NXT in action and going well beyond the limits. As Jim said, we're all still trying to catch up on our sleep (and in my case mow the over-long grass... how can I get the NXT to do that...), but it was a wild and wonderful three days.

For those who haven't heard, NI developed NXT-G... and has continued to do so, opening up a lot more power over time (and those times are not over I think). True to form the NI wizards had some amazing technology demonstrations of their own, including two-on-two human-vs-robot robo-soccer based on the NXT and a computer-driven vision system, a robot you could control by playing pan pipes or even singing at it (very cool... I'll have to ask what happens if you sing the five notes from Close Encounters, I didn't try it at the time). Being a high-tech expo, we learned about a lot of nifty stuff from NI and related folks (some LEGO related, some not... but all useful). Want a 3 Tb (no that's not a misprint) drive that can stream data at ridiculous speeds? Watch the NI wizards turn it into the Godzilla version of TiVo :-).

Outside of NI, a group from Ohio State (I think?) brought the challenge table, an amazing display in itself, which we used for our challenge and they demoed on throughout the event (and since they had to truck it personally to the event, my "long-range driving hat" is off to them). We learned about things up-and-coming from NI (LEGO and non-LEGO related), HiTechnic, and of course LEGO. We even got to sit down to lunch with Chris Anderson, and talk about what's up next on the "personal UAV" horizon (he's done some amazing things, and the horizons just keep expanding for this project). Some of the other keynote speakers did things like build autonomous humanoid robots that play soccer (again, amazingly impressive).

On the LEGO front, we talked a lot with Steven Canvin and others from LEGO about the past, present, and future of the product, and gave him lots of suggestions and question (some from this blog), mostly over very long, late meetings, that I wish could have gone longer (after sleeping, anyway). And Steve from HiTechnic also showed us a lot of fun things and toys.

The three of us will post more over time on this - there's a lot to get out, so give us time. And if any of our readers have heard (or attended!) NI Week, we'd love to hear about it - it was a fantastic event for everyone (LEGO or other high-tech). And it's nice to see Alpha Rex on a PPT slide right next to the CERN Supercollider, both being run by essentially the same software (LabVIEW... I don't think CERN uses NXT-G yet ;-). I'll just leave you with a final picture that shows most (not all - I've got photos of Jim too) of the happy group (how many do you know?):

--
Brian "sleep deprived but happy" Davis
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

ROBOTMAK3RS Review: LEGO River Steamboat

By Asha Seshan - ROBOTMAK3R
I thought the LEGO River Steamboat would be an interesting set for a ROBOTMAK3R review for a few reasons. First, the LEGO designer of the model is Marina Stampoli, a long-time collaborator of the late ROBOTMAK3R Vassilis Chryssanthakopoulo s. From earlier collaborations with Vassilis, I  knew Marina was incredibly talented, with an eye for aesthetics and functionality. Her background in architecture is particularly useful for her relatively new position at LEGO. Her other sets include the Magic of Disney (21352), Message Board (41839), and Red London Telephone Box (21347). Second, watching Marina's reveal video  and reading her designer interview made this set even more tempting to build. The gearing mechanisms running through the model gave way to many opportunities for automation using LEGO robotics elements. Since ROBOTMAK3RS is all about adding interactivity and automation to LEGO brick, I thought it would be fun to see where and how LEGO robotics could be added to this s...
Read more

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

By Asha Seshan - ROBOTMAK3R
In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by  Coder Shah  in our  MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity.  1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT...
Read more

Ghostbusters R.T.V Remix

By Asha Seshan - ROBOTMAK3R
Nino Guba is from Torrance, California, USA. He played with LEGO as a kid, but growing up in the Philippines, it wasn’t something he had easy access to. He only got reintroduced to LEGO when he moved to the US and had kids of his own. When his sons were younger, they received LEGO sets as gifts, but as they grew older, the sets got put into storage as their interest faded. Fast forward a few years, he started coming up with his own product ideas and thought about how he could quickly prototype them. That’s when he discovered LEGO MINDSTORMS—and was hooked! He raided his kids’ old collection, got everything organized, and now he's designing and building his own creations, blending his coding skills with LEGO robotics to bring ideas to life. Tell us about your Ghostbusters Remote Trap Vehicle (R.T.V) project. This project is a LEGO Technic adaptation of the Ghostbusters R.T.V.—a ghost trap converted into a remote-controlled vehicle. Its companion build is a prop replica of the Futaba...
Read more