Smart Mirror

RPiCopter, unity, and graphics are all halted with the intent of returning to them when interest or usefulness piques again.

So I am building a smart mirror now!

Here's how the Idea started:
I am moving in to a new place, and my friends have been giving me grief for not having any wall decor. So, I decided to make my own. I had the idea of a Iron Man-esque setup with my own Jarvis helping me out and stuff, as any true mechanical engineer does (and should) want. Step 1: Jarvis.

I debated between using Mycroft open AI, Alexa, and Google Assistant as my base, since I'm obviously way out of my depth in creating my own AI. I settled on google assistant because I'm a Google fanboy (Google please hire/fund me), and also because they have the most straightforward API for the Raspberry Pi 3. Took me several tries, but got it to work, plus they have a Python API, so don't need to work too hard to figure out how to use it.

Hardware wise: I am using a raspberry pi 3, ultrasonic sensor, 7'' HDMI LCD display, logitec webcam, a usb sound card, 3.5mm speakers, and a 3.5mm simple desktop mic.

For the prototype mirror, I bought a mirror reflective window tint film on amazon, and a 12'' x 12'' photo frame form Michael's. I removed the glass from the frame, and applied the mirror film, and replaced the glass. then in the backboard of the frame, I cut out two large rectangles: one for my LCD screen so that it would be in direct contact with the glass, and another one for the camera for the same reason. I blacked out the front of the backboard with black construction paper, and temporarily taped the parts in place. I then attached the ultrasonic sensor to the bottom edge of the frame, because unlike the camera, it is not going to work through the semi-transparent reflective film.

the film doesn't really create a mirror finish, and the reflection looks blurred, but it really is good enough for a prototype. the mirror is ideal under certain lighting conditions. and in others, you can clearly see the mounted display and camera, or the display is too bright and looks a different color. The latter situation will almost definitely be fixable in the future with larger and more affordable OLED displays. because the main reason is because of the backlight.

The backlight is always turned on, so even when the color of the screen is set to black, i.e. nothing is being displayed, it still emits some light. This is annoyingly noticeable when you turn the lights off in the room: because there is more light on the screen side of the mirror than the outside, all light travels out, and basically turns in to a night light. OLED actually turns off pixels, so there is no backlight effect.

As for the product itself, here's what I envision:

The mirror will be completely voice activated. when you walk toward it, it will turn on, and welcome you, allowing you access to a multitude of features. all other times, it will merely be wall decor. It will have the ability to shown you many preset features including: weather, to-do lists, stock trends and prices, web articles, etc.. 

The current Idea I am running with however, is that it is a daily reflection (hehe... he... he... get it?) tool, designed to help you form helpful habits in the beginning and end of the day. Such habits could include: morning posture correction, morning routine drill for tooth brushing, flossing, water drinking etc., daily audio journal, daily thankfulness/mindfulness activity. Any and all of these functions could be selected via a paired smartphone app, to allow a personalized user experience. 

 I have been working on this off and on (more off) for a month,  and I have the display, a basic UI, google assistant, the ultrasonic feature, and the camera working. it was suggested to me to put the camera in there for many possible future functions, for example: personalized displays from facial recognition (working on that right now), timelapse collage of photos, security camera mode, video calls, emotion recogniton, and stress level detection form photo analysis.

Work in progress, will add pictures soon. possibly could sell something like this if I made many quality improvements. Until then, it'll be just for me. And it'll be really cool. And you all will be jealous. Google please fund me.

Raspberry Pi Quadcopter (Almost 1 year update)

So I haven't been working on the Quad very much. I took it to college with me, but I couldnt find the time, space, or motivation to make any significant progress with it. the problem I was having last winter break, i believe, was that the code from PiStuffing worked, but The Quad just kept accelerating to its maximum thrust, and blew off its propeller caps. At first, I thought that this may be a problem with the PID gains, because the guy who built the code probably had a quad with different specs and mass properties. I thought I would have to somehow find the right gains for my design.

Then just recently, I had a different Idea. I realized that the commands that we were giving the quad were just simple velocity commands, and so the gains had nothing to do with the constant max thrust. Even if the gains were wrong, we would still see a constant thrust(PWM Signal)rather than an increasing one, when the velocity was set to a constant. The problem is not with the code. It is with the experiment. When testing, I did not want to destroy my ceiling, or fly in to international airspace, so I had tethered the quad to the ground using thread, with some slack.

When I ran the tests, the incorrect gains caused the quad to thrust up a little too much but because of the thread, the quad could not rise effectively. The PID took the small velocity change as an input and we needed more velocity, so it increased the velocity as an output. Now the thread was pulled taut, and velocity was zero, so the PID just kept increasing the thrust until the max thrust was reached.

I need to find a way to test the quad in a more effective way.

Solidworks and Matlab

robotics is an expensive hobby. with all of the electronics parts and the structural components, and the power supplies and the testing equipment, it is hard to find an easy way for me to build some of the ideas i had in mind. for example, I wanted to prove to myself that I could fully design and build a robotic arm, but i have no idea where to start, since randomly buying servos and parts and hoping it works is not good engineering practice, nor is it cost efficient. 

I talked to one of my professors, Dr. Panogiotis Artemiadis, about using some of his EMG devices to control a simple robotic arm, as an interesting project. he agreed to help me (and I am extremely thankful), but first I have to have a robotic arm to use. I decided that instead of spending so much time and money on building a real arm, why not design one on SOLIDWORKS, and simulate the motion and control systems in Matlab. I learned both of these softwares inn these first two years of college. So i created a very rudimentary robotic arm, with only two degrees of freedom, meaning two arms, in SOLIDWORKS. 

Once I had that assembly made, after a little bit of online research, I Installed the Simmechanics toolbox in to Matlab, and the simmechanics link in to solidworks. Then I exported the assembly as an xml file, through the simmechanics link, which seems to be the only way to actually import a model in to matlab/simulink. When I opened the xml model of the arm in simulink, the progrram automatically had created a project with all of the individual parts from my assembly, with all the relations put in. 

When I ran the simulation, the output was a 10 second video of the arm starting in one orientation, and then moving based on the effects of gravity and the relations and geometries of the parts. Because it was just a two joint arm, it modeled like a two arm pendulum, with very complex motions. 

I realized that the simulink model did not take in to account any collisions between the parts, as the arms freely swung through the base, despite both being solid parts. I am now going to focus on adding angle constraints to prevent part collision. I will also add a PID control loop, with a step function, and joint actuators at the hinges, to be able to control the angle, and the measure the torque necessary to hold up the arm. 

That max torrque will tell me how powerful of a servo will be necessary to power the arm and not break. 

Does technology drive new product development?

Whenever I see a new piece of tech come out to the market, and get mad publicity, it seems like there is always some crazy breakthrough research that is being used. How do I go about coming up with creative ideas for a useful, successful product, if I dont have the research to back it?

My current creative process involves using technologies that I found on the internet, mashing them together with preexisting ideas I have from my own experience, and part by part, work the idea in to a product. Then when I check online if anything like this already exists,  it turns out that it does, and it is 100 times better than the one I thought of. 

Either that happens, or my Idea for a cool invention is just so completely bizzare and unnecessary, that I can't justify turning i in to a reality. 

For a truly revolutionary idea, in the past people, with revolutionary ideas like Tesla, or Google, had truly original ideas, that were ahead of their time. Maybe taking inspiration from current new tech is the wrong approach,  Maybe the best way to do this is by changing the way I approach coming up with new Ideas. Maybe I can try avoiding new tech all for a while and see what happens. I draw inspiration from it, but If i stop that, perhaps I can  solely focus on looking for real world problems that need to be solved. That is, of course what most experienced people suggest. 

EEG vs EMG

In the last post, which was a while back, I was discussing some Ideas I had about the EEG headset and future technologies. The obvious problem with that is the fact that the tech is so underdeveloped due to our minimal knowledge of the human brain, that we cant hope to create any worthwhile robotic applications in the near future.

When I was discussing this, a friend of mine pointed me toward another similar tech called Electromyography, or EMG. It uses actual muscular stimulation as the data input instead of extrapolated neural signal patterns which currently have a very low degree of accuracy. With the EMG you place electrodes similar to the EEG electrodes, on specific locations on the muscle you are targeting. The sensor detects electrical signals sent to the muscles through nerves. This signal has a direct influence on the tension or relaxation of the muscle, and there is almost no way to interpret the signal incorrectly.

MYO is a product already available for purchase, that uses this tech for basic audio/video control, such as pause, play, fast forward, rewind. https://www.myo.com. It is an arm band that detects gestures, and relays them to any device with bluetooth. It is also open for developers, and people like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDeOFxhH5lY have used it in basic robotics as well.

I want to go a step further, and use the EMG tech to develop a fully prosthetic robotic arm/robotic sleeve that slips on to the arm.

The device will be an extension of the user. There are endless possibilities. Spiderman webs shooting at one end? a specific hand pattern to unlock, improving security? hydraulic shoulder extension to punch harder? It'll be like Inspector Gadget! This is within our current capabilities as engineers.

Brainwave Reading Applicatons

As mentioned last time, This new technology has limitless applications. It is one of the first steps towards integrating technology in to the human body.

The mind is a highly versatile and flexible tool. Techniques such as hypnosis, as well experiences like learning a new skill or habit show that the brain is not completely hardwired, and can be rearranged to link one mental thought pattern(trigger) to a completely unrelated action. This means we can link different thoughts with specific effects that they have, caused by the EEG headset. This has been most prominently used in prosthetics. New experiments have shown that artificial limbs can be controlled by thoughts through the headset, in a natural fluid motion. Obviously, you're not using the same neural pathways to control the artificial hand as the ones everyone else uses,  however the different pattern becomes second nature after constant use. That is how we learn

A direct extension of this is the use of EEG headsets to control a full robotic body!

-Jump cut to the scene form James Cameron's Avatar(2009)- and now replace the blue humanoids with the robots from iRobot. HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE!!

Of course this level of thought reading is probably hundreds of years in the future, but the implications are so beautiful. Currently, the commercially available headsets have a very narrow range of functions. The MindWave specifically, reads raw data, attention, relaxation, blinks, and a broad spectrum of brain wave frequencies. While the relatively mediocre technology reads a larger band width, it can not effectively read more detailed fluctuations/patterns. 

I was looking at the problem of controlling an RC car with this tech. There are four basic commands needed to operate: forward acceleration, negative acceleration, turn left, and turn right. The headset only reads two mental states: attention, and relaxation. 

Some people have approached this problem by only using the headset for part of the controls. for example, use a joystick for controlling direction, and the headset for moving forward or backward. I don't know about you, but this seems pretty boring and unnecessary to me. I want full control. For this, I think we need to experimentally find new mental states/brain wave patterns to use. 

To be continued...

TELEPATHY!!

Recently, while I was sitting in the university library, letting my thoughts wander, thinking about the technology of the future, I remembered a ted talk I had watched a couple years ago, about a headset that could read your thoughts! It was pretty far developed at the time, but I never heard of it actually taking off. So I looked in to it again, and what I found was a Gold Mine!

There are currently So many businesses and research labs designing and  working with small EEG (electroencephalogram) scanners in the form of a headset or a cap, that read your thoughts. The scanners read a wide range of electromagnetic waves from your brain, and neuroscience has correlated the different frequencies to different thought patterns.

Currently, the most common application for these devices, is treating mental health through biofeedback, or helping the disabled. However, several low cost scanners have also been added to the market for enthusiasts and developers.

The Potential is Endless for this tech. It can be integrated into robotics, internet of things, and data analytics, just to name a few. The best part, is that while the actual devices are a minimum investment of $100,  the software to operate them is virtually free, making it a developer's dream!

Neurosky is one of the products I was looking in to. They have a cheap EEG headset with Bluetooth capabilities, and furthermore, have made it a Point, to invite Developers to use their product. While I don't doubt that they have some selfish motives for this (publicity and increased market size), giving the people a chance to experiment and play with it is a big step in pushing technological development forward.

I am eager to invest in a Neurosky headset, and experiment with it. In my next post, i'll explain some of the ideas I had in using this technology and its future, and also how I plan to use it.

Raspberry Pi Quadcopter Version 4

I went to college after the props shattered and I took the Pi with me, to continue my analysis on how I could tune the gains easier.

I am a part of the Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) Club at ASU, and I took my problem as well as my designs to some of the members there. I got some pretty good feedback from them: first of all, the frame was too wide, and so the props were back washing on to the quad, reducing the effectiveness of the motors, and causing further turbulence that the PID was to slow to correct for. Essentially, I was pushing against myself.

After I came home for winter break 2015, i continued my search for a better design. I found a blog called Pistuffing. Some guy was using the Pi to build a Quad, just like me, and although it was a work in progress, His code was a million times more sophisticated than the chicken scratch I had thrown together. Still, I found that I had the right idea, and so I began to look at his Github Repository, and analyze his code. I adopted the files he had created, and started experimenting. It took almost the whole break to understand it, because I started out having no Idea how to even begin, but eventually I got it.

I bought strips of balsa wood, which is light, and new propellers. I once again mounted everything, and began testing, by tying the four corners of the Quad to chairs, so that it would not flip over or shoot up in to the sky. I learned how to debug code using print statements to narrow down the location of the problem.

I found some flaws in the code, which were causing the quad to just go full thrust instantly, or perhaps that is due to my design. It turns out that the latest version is lighter than anticipated, and so it takes less thrust to lift.

That is the point where i am right now. It may work reasonably, and have found a way to test it. I am going back to college now, but will for sure continue to try and get it to fly in the future.

Quadcopter V.4

Raspberry Pi Quadcopter Version 3

In my last post I previewed that I had bought Brushless DC 3-phase motors with their corresponding ESC's. After doing even more research, I bought a 3 cell lipo battery rated at 1300 mAh (the smallest one I could find.) I also bought a power distribution board to supply the power from the battery to the ESC's, as well as male and female bullet connectors, and 9045 propellers.

A source on the internet showed me that an accelerometer module could be used to find the angles that could be usid as inputs in the PID algorithm, to provide stability to the quadcopter. I had one of those modules in one of the Raspberry PI starter kits that I had gotten. It was the ADXL345

I made the frame of the new design Quadcopter using plywood. which I cut in to shape with a hand saw. I then drilled holes into the wood and screwed the motors and raspberry pi in to place. Because I needed to remove and recharge the batteries for the ESC as well as the Raspberry Pi often, I just stuck those on with tape. The power distribution board went on the bottom, and plastic cups cut in half were attached for the stands under each motor. 

I integrated the PID algorithm in to the code and wrote in a loop that gave me manual control of the base thrust given to the motors.

WARNING: The motors spin really really fast and are dangerous when first testing one, I accidentally set the thrust too high, and the propeller and the screw on top of it shot off the motor, nearly taking out my eye. On a separate occasion, when testing the quad, my mom was helping out, and she cut her finger pretty on the blades, because they were spinning so fast she couldn't see them. 

I was able to control the motors using the same PWM function on the Pi. 

FINALLY! the quadcopter was able to lift up off the ground! unfortunately, it consistently veered off on to one side or the other. I was able to correct it to an extent by changing the gains on the PID algorithm, however it could not reliably lift off the ground more than a foot without violently tipping and at that point I would have to shut down the code. 

I once again read some more online, and found a gyroscope module, which I had once looked at, but because I didn't understand the vital differences between the gyroscope and accelerometer, dismissed it as the same thing. but more expensive. This time I got a better sense of what was happening in the code and in the accelerometer module. the motion of the aircraft and the vibrations caused it to be a lot more unreliable in flight, whereas while testing it, it was fine. I bought an imu unit (MPU6050), and it gave me much more stable in flight angle readings. 

This looked promising, however, the problem with the PID gains still persisted. How would I tune the PID gains? they had to be tested manually(no easy mathematical solution), and I couldn't allocate a lot of space to trying it over and over, because I lived in a small apartment at the time, and needed a good wifi connection to use the Pi. 

I tried several times, and the one last time I changed the PID gains, one of the motors revved up a lot more than the others, the quacopter flipped on its back, and all of the propellers shattered. 

Stay tuned for the stunning continuation to the tragedy!

Raspberry Pi Quadcopter Version 2

After facing the plethora of problems with batteries and voltage drops in the first version, I decided to do some more research and found out that the motor speed and the propeller size I had gave me a much smaller total thrust than the weight of my quad. so after using an online calculator for the thrust, I decided to buy better motors and larger propellers.

What I realized was that newer quads use brush less motors rather than brushed ones because they are much more efficient at using power, and can spin much faster, but they cost a whole lot more than regular brushed dc motors, because you have to buy electronic speed controllers to manage those better motors. However this ends up costing around a hundred dollars, and I didn't want to spend that much.

I got brushed motors that were larger and more powerful than the previous ones, and I also bought size 1045 plastic propellers. Together this combination could theoretically lift 1kg, which was almost exactly the total weight of the one I had. The problem I found was that there motors were not meant for Quads, and so the rod on which I was mounting the props was too thin. I temporarily wrapped the mounting rods with masking tape to make them thicker, so I could mount the props. I also bought a small portable battery pack with a USB connection to provide the 5V, 1A power that the raspberry pi required. It was really a pain, because most lightweight portable batteries are 0.5A sources. I mounted everything on the styrofoam frame, and taped everthing on securely

I wrote a better version of the code inn python, and spend a while learning about PID algorithms, and how I could use them to make my quad have stable flight.

This time, the problem I faced was that all the batteries and the components were still too heavy for the quad, and moreover, because the motors were not made for air crafts, they did not spin as fast as they should have because of the resistance from the propellers. After a few more days of research and testing the motors at higher voltages etc., I decided that making a quadcopter using regular dc motors was not practical and a waste of time and energy.

I instead started to look at if I can use brushless DC motors like the ones they use in professional RC quads, for my project. It turns out that you can, however I had to make a pretty large investment of around $100 to buy the right motors as well as electronic speed controllers (ESC's)  for the motors.

It is really cool how the brushless motors work. The rotation happens due to the changes in a magnetic field in the coils of the motor, which oscillate in three phases. I decided to use those new motors in Version 3. Stay tuned and in my next post I will show you what design changes I made and the challenges I faced.  

Raspberry Pi Quadcopter Version 1

In the summer of 2015, I started designing a quadcopter from scratch. I decided to use the raspberry pi as the main flight controller Because I had one, and it is relatively light weight. Disclaimer, I started this project with next to no knowledge as to how I would go about designing and building the quad. 

After a few initial days of research as to what it would take for me to build a quad, I decided to use the motors and props of the Syma x5 quad that I already had. The Raspberry Pi would be on board the quad, and after seeing a video online about a quad some guy had built, I decided to use styrofoam as my mounting surface. I also realized that in order to control the motors separately, I would need two H-Bridges, each powering and regulating a separate motor. The Syma x5 uses tiny DC motors, and bring the props up to a suitable speed by using a couple of gears. i was using the same props, so I had no problems with that. The motors needed a 6.6 V supply, so i just used the same lipo battery pack that came with the Syma. 

I connected to the Rasperry Pi via SSH from my windows machine, and for that I also had to setup a wifi adapter. A big problem I realized was that the raspberry pi also needed to be powered, and it had to be through micro USB, and after some more googling, I found that it had to be 5V and 1A, and most lightweight commercial power packs were 500mA. To power the Pi as well as the wifi adapter and use so many of the GPIO pins, I would need a substantially heavier power source. I decided to worry about that later, and first just focus on getting my motors running using the H bridges. 

Several online tutorials showed me how to use the basic bash commands, to access the raspberry pi via SSH, and to open up the nano editor to code in python. I also learned how the H bridges worked, and how to wire everything up. Finally, learned to use the GPIO libraries in python to send a PWM signal and. I had not learned Python as a language before, so at first I was just copy pasting, and it took a few days to understand the code, as well as how the language worked at a basic level. Meanwhile, I just used a couple of long wires running from the GPIO Pins to the  H-Bridges. I got a sheet of styrofoam from a hobby store and cut it in to the measured lengths, and cut out open portions in the center. (side note: when cutting styrofoam, and mounting the motors, the styrofoam bits will get everywhere, and cleaning up will be a pain, so put a plastic sheet underneath your working surface.) After mounting the motors in to the sides of the styrofoam, I wrote a small program in python that just started the signal, changed the duty cycle a couple times, and then stopped.

The motors spun, and changed speeds when the duty cycle changed, however the speed that they were getting was not enough to even lift the frame, without the raspbery pi or its battery. The Problem i found was that the H bridge was poorly designed, and a forum told me that the bridge sapped about 2 V from the power input. In the end, this version did not have enough thrust. So I would have to make some design changes. 

In my next post, I will show you What design changes I made, some problems I faced, and hopefully, I'll get my quadcopter to fly! 

Quadcopters (uses)

1. transferring power to lightbulbs through the air, like a flying power outlet. http://www.techthefuture.com/energy/scientists-turn-quadcopters-into-flying-power-stations/ 
2. hover bike (uses the same tech as quad copters, but can carry a much greater weight. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2737833/Fly-like-Stormtrooper-Amazing-video-showcases-futuristic-hoverbike-set-sale-not-size-set-45-000.html
3. Multiple quad copters catch and throw balls by moving together like a swarm.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWzt0COWnJo
4. Quadcopters and airplanes fly and navigate obstacles autonomously. http://www.acceler8or.com/2012/11/encouraging-developments-in-quadcopters-w-lots-of-video/
5. using xbox kinect to make qudcopters follow gestures. http://www.acceler8or.com/2011/12/quadrotors-will-do-everything-well-almost/
6. quadcopter that uses gps to navigate. http://www.gizmag.com/3d-robotics-iris-gps-guided-quadcopter-drone/28818/

Security

I was thinking about security today, and how reliant it has become on technology. In my law class we watched a video of three scam artists and how they robbed a bank. The security cameras were in place, but that did not stop them from stealing a $35,000 rolex. We are rolling in to an age where almost everything is connected to the internet. Online security will become a huge industry of it's own in the future. The current security systems rely on complex mathematical algorithms to encrypt data. This will only go so far. we need a better way to defend our privacy. You need something that can be transfered to other people, but can not be just simply guessed. A method of protecting your computer that I thought of is that a mechanical trigger would begin any downloads, to ensure a safe computer. also, a fake projection of the computer could be used to download the file and check for damage. I will think on this further.

Tech 2013

Surfing the web these past few days, I have been seeing a whole lot of "Best of 2013" reviews for all sorts of stuff, from Movies, to TV shows, to youtube videos. I thought, why not come up with a list o my own personal best of 2013 technology and science developments. I will keep the list to a short 5 items due to my poor memory, in no particular order whatsoever.

5. Google Glass: This google product gained quite a bit of popularity because of it's diversion from the meta of modern technology. The concept in and of itself of an "iron-man"-like way to gather more detailed information about your surroundings, and a hands free device, is what I believe had the biggest impact on everyone's imaginations. Other than that it seems to have the same capabilities as a smartphone. I put it in my top 5 list because I think that it is a fairly large step forward in the way humans will use technology in the future, and the full cyborg transformation. ;)

4. Drones: This year was big for drone technology. The government amended it's drone policy, and perfected military warfare and espionage drones. The quad-copter personal mini drones grew in popularity, for recreational use. Even Amazon launched it's delivery via drone experiment. To me, the future seems optimistic in this field. I can just imagine swarms of drones zooming through cities to windows of high rise apartment windows, carrying pizza. Of course, it would sound like living in a bee hive, but the luxury of laziness has it's drawbacks.

3. Graphene Aerogel: I loved this news when it came out in march. Chinese scientists developed a material so light that it can sit on a dandelion without causing any damage. It is the world's lightest substance. this definitely deserves the top five list, despite it's lack of popularity, because it has so many applications. This will be used in the future in all aviation, scientific instruments, and environmental defense, bcause it is just so versatile. One can never have something light enough in engineering.

Mach 1.8

Spike Aerospace Company, recently has built a prototype supersonic jet for business and commercial use: the S-512. It tops at a ridiculous mach 1.8! That is nearly two times the speed of sound! The best part of this prototype and design is the fact that it is a passenger aircraft. Until recently, there were only a handful of passenger supersonic jets, and since 2003, the last of them have been decommissioned, and even so, they traveled at mach 1.5 and below.

So what is stopping us from all getting one? For one, Money; it costs $80,000,000. Also, This model is a prototype, and has not actually been tested with passengers; it is a theoretical craft, with all of the kinks not worked out. It is, to my knowledge, still a bit of a mystery, as to what would happen to un-equipped businessmen or children at the point when the plane went supersonic. Supersonic jets, when entering those speeds, create a sonic boom due to the compression of air in front of and around the aircraft. The people may go deaf because of the sound. Naturally, there would be no great bodily harm, because the internal air is contained. The safety features that are placed in larger planes, would need to be altered, because opening the hatch at supersonic speeds would likely result in many deaths. Despite some cons, I have to say that shortening a 16 hour trip down to eight is greatly luring. I predict that there will be developments in the coming year in this field, but commercial jets will not break the sound barrier for at least another ten years, and several accidents. 

Windows Phone

I got a Nokia Lumia for Christmas, and it is basically the first real phone that I've ever had. It is kind of sad, getting it when I'm seventeen, but whatever. Anyways, I have used the android software as well as the IOS7 software on my parents phones, and I have to say that windows is majorly underrated.

Frankly, I have gotten a little bored with apple. They are not progressing their software at their previous rate, and android has basically caught up. Also, while they have a nice user interface, bugs with apple maps and app crashes do get in the way a lot. Apple is sleek and modern, but in my eyes, has lost it's charm. Android is the complete opposite of Apple. They are building up a great app store, and very innovative user interfaces. The customizability is particularly cool, because you can literally restructure your entire phone! On the other hand, it is an labyrinth to navigate. There are just so many things. First you have your main screen which is huge, but the app icons are too small and obscure that you cant easily find what you are looking for, and second, after a few months of use, it quickly gets unresponsive, or "laggy"(based on my dad's and some friends' experiences). When I used it once, I spent a whole ten minutes just looking for the settings.

Now to the point of my rantings: The windows phone, while it has it's quirks, is much more efficient and convenient than any other. I bought my Lumia 1020 for it's ENORMOUS camera. The OS on the device gives me a lot of customizability(live tiles), nad also the option to sync all of my accounts to the phone, so that everything from my Facebook, to my contacts, to my email, to Skype, is all right there at the touch of a button. The interface is simple and small, but all apps have a similar design, so the overall feel is coherent and sophisticated, whereas the iphone and android have a more open application design; android more so. The simplicity of the setup and navigation is really what startled me. I literally spent no more than a fifteen minutes on it, and found out how to do everything. Overall, well done, Microsoft.

Robotic Muscle

In an article today in Gizmag, they demonstrated a robotic muscle developed at the micro scale, that they claimed "is 1000 times more powerful that a human's." It runs on the idea that vanadium dioxide, at a certain temperature, abruptly changes its molecular structure, and that expansion that it undergoes, when combined with many other vanadium dioxide molecules will amount to a very large force. The problem that I found with this is that first of all, all of the tests were conducted at a micro scale, and succeeded only under controlled conditions. next, nature gave humans a certain amount of muscle strength because with more, we would harm ourselves. On a large scale, controlling the energy output is difficult, because there are only two states (muscle expanded and muscle contracted), and there isn't a gradual increase in in power

however, I believe that this advance is still a great thing, because it has better applications outside of the robotics genre. This could be used perhaps as a repairing agent. cracks formed in roads or bridges could be resealed much more easily, by using the tremendous forces to press asphalt in to the roads. It could also be used as a component in nano robots, because current nano robotics lacks the technology to have a muscle that small, and plus, the power boost would increase their efficiency.

Transformers

A couple of days ago, I saw an article on Popsci :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQf0qsRTsoA&feature=youtu.be. The video link shows a chain of motor modules that link together and rotate to create various shapes.

The approach was based on protein chains in living things that change shape to perform different functions. About a year ago, I saw an approach to this by modeling the modules after muscles and joints. The modules were plastic pouches attached together using plastic joints that could turn front, back, left, and right. the pouches had four sections each of which expanded or contracted when filled with air, similar to muscles. these air modules would turn in very rigid ways however, and used up a lot of power to pump air in. Sadly, I can not find the link for that video.

The approach that the video shows makes use rotating motors that require very little power to turn, and are much less rigid. The individual modules are rather large and clumsy, however if made smaller, without reducing the life of the motor, they could work. This also brings up the topic of nanotechnology. Yet a skeptical subject, nanotechnology makes use of microscopic modules either biotic or mechanical, to cure illness, fix computers, espionage; a plethora of theoretical uses. These large motor modules could make that sci-fi fantasy a reality.

Well why do we want these things in the first place? They seem expensive and crude, and wouldn't it be much easier just to make the things you want like we do now? I think that the answer comes down to standardization If everything was made of the same stuff, then one could have whatever he wanted, and the need to waste time and money to buy unnecessary items would go away. You could buy an oven, pull off a handle, and turn it into a blender! The problem of greed would end, because everyone would have everything they wanted. 

Let's Play Catch!

I saw an article on popsci today: http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-11/watch-awesome-robot-play-catch-better-your-dad. The page has a small video of a humanoid robot that has a hand which can catch a ball. This is an amazing development  in technology, because catching a ball needs precision of where the hand is held, and the robot must also be able to calculate the final position of the ball within milliseconds, not to mention moving the arm fast enough. This version of the robot uses an external camera with an ultrasonic sensor of some sort to locate the position of the ball in three dimensional space. Perhaps the same camera can be placed in the head. If that were done, the robot would need to calculate the speed based solely on the distance that the ball is from itself, an would also need to know the exact location of it's own hand. This calculation could give the robot a sense of artificial self acknowledgment, only seen in animals. I think that all microscopic life forms are a kind of machine which is pre downloaded with code, however when self acknowledgment comes in to play such as in larger animals, the animal can learn. Seeing its own arm and moving it is a very premature intelligence, however it would be the first step to creating an intelligent and learning robot. Going back to the actual hardware, the robot's limbs move fluidly, and precisely. Making effective legs that can run and jump do not appear very far off in the future. 

Just this year, I joined the robotics club in Homestead High School. Over the past two months, I have learned some things about the robots that we build, however I quickly found that my technical knowledge on the subject was extremely small. I hope to educate myself and readers through this blog.