Hello everyone! (Hi Doctor Nick!… nevermind.)
I had better post an update before 2008, not too long left in this year man!
First off, I probably won’t be updating often until next year. I don’t have much time at the moment unfortunately and have heaps on until Jan. Anyone with an account will be able to update however so feel free to jump on and wreck up the place post some great updates about your projects!
Even though I won’t be updating often I am still working on my own projectst slowly as well as following robotics everywhere. Ausrobotics is still fully operational and I want to see it grow massively in ‘09. This year was heaps of fun, the only thing we need is a more focused site and better community involvement. As always I welcome any advice, support, anything from all you guys!
Thanks to everyone that contributed over the year (and last year), next year will be even better. We may even meet up for beers! *gasp*
Hello everyone. Just a quick update with what is going on with ausrobotics this week and next.
What is going on?
First off, I know the new site is confusing some of you. This seems to be mostly because of the limited functionality available in the current forum and possibly due to the layout of the site.
The main reason I chose WP-Forum as the forum for AR was its seamless integration with the rest of the site. I didn’t want people to have to log-in twice to access the forum and then their development blogs, plus its a bit of a pain to admin two entirely separate systems. Even so, I am not completely happy with it. It keeps throwing up DB errors when I turn on certain features so I have had to disable them (you know, the useful ones like Last Posted Topics etc.).
I am thinking that migrating (again – argh) to PHPBB3 might be a winner. It’s a well known forum and those who love forums will feel right at home. The only issue is that I need a robust way of keeping the two databases in sync. I’m looking around for a solution as we speak and will keep you posted. Till then please keep posting!
Any Sydney-side roboteers out there?
Also, Higgsman is looking for fellow robot builders in Sydney if anyone wants to contact him. His MSN details are in this post.
Oh yeah, and robot legs…
Honda have used some of the technology from Asimo to develop a pair of extremely uncomfortable looking exoskeletal assistance legs. For some reason I don’t like the groin grabbing aspect of them although it *would* be great to have an instant chair wherever you went… 
[via Artificial Intelligence and Robotics]
Welcome to the new people m3t304a and chusai who have just joined the site!
I appreciate you taking the time to register guys. Feel free to ask any questions you might have or start blogging about how you are going with your own projects. Actually that is something I need to do as well!
I have enabled two new plugins on the site to help you get posting quicker.
1) Easier YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, etc embedding
The site allowed embedding of videos previously by clicking on the ‘Add media’ buttons in the Post editing page but it wasn’t actually embedding the vids properly (which was mega annoying). Now to embed youtube videos into your site you can just use a shortcode (left and right square brackets with some stuff in between) as explained here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/video-bracket-tag/
2) Lighter Menus Plugin
This plugin simply turns most of the Wordpress admin menus into easy to access drop-down menus. That means you get writing quicker! Most of you probably haven’t even noticed these yet, I bring it up so you know what to hassle me about if anything breaks.
In other news… This is why we do this, people. Never forget.
Does anyone have a really large electromagnet?
It was lucky that Terminator 3 was on TV in Melbourne last night because I may soon need to know how to terminate a pack of robot hunter/killers myself if the US Army’s planned Multi-Robot Pursuit System becomes a reality. The system is designed to allow a human operator overseeing the partially autonomous robot “pack” to “to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject.” – Minority Report anyone? Man, the Big Dog video is unnerving already and that is without pack hunting capability built in!
More from New Scientist
It’s just like a normal Servo motor. Only different.
Need to choreograph your droid’s servos to do something but can’t be bothered writing a simulator or some other control system? Matt as part of Thing-A-Day has a good new article on using a servo motor as an input device. Using a servo in this way allows you to have force feedback or to train motion as they do with industrial robots. Check it out below!
Using a Servo as an input device
Stop press! Robotics has reached it’s peak.
Ok I don’t understand what is going on in this exactly other than:
- It is a robot
- It pours beer
- I think it is initiated by a message over the Pownce network
- It pours beer
Air Fish
Awesome motion control and implemention!
Looks like it could be remade fairly easily. Just got to keep the weight down.
Simple Solar Projects
I may use some of the techniques in it for one of my planned projects, the “AutoWaterer 5000 Series – Augmented Autonomous Flora Hydration System”. Ok, it’s really a solar powered bucket of water but no-one needs to know that!
Check it out!
Getting started with the new Ausrobotics website:
1) Sign-up for an account if you have not already done so! - Once you have signed up you can immediately start blogging about your projects on the main site and in the forum.
2) Sign-in and check out the new authoring control panel - It’s now easier to view and manage your posts and comments from one place.
3) Subscribe to the Ausrobotics feed using your favorite RSS reader @ http://ausrobotics.com/feed/. - That way you can stay in touch with what is going on without even visiting the site!
4) Start talking in the Forums – Got a question about robotics? Start asking and get answers! One thing to note is that you can now easily create forum topics from posts to get the conversation going (See the bottom of the Write Post screen).
5) Get excited because you have a lot of great new features on the way! - Event listings, Project management, member geolocation, email comment subscriptions and more. Go Wordpress!
Well it looks like we launched just in time. Robo Japan 2008 is on at the moment and chock full of robo goodness (like it could be anything else given the words that make up its title).
Lots of service robots in this one but not as many beer droids as I would like. Is there ever?
Robo Japan 2008 [via Pink Tentacle]
I am more than happy to announce that Ausrobotics.com v2 is now live.
If you are a member please sign in and have a look around. If you are not a member yet then what are you waiting for?!
Join us today and you will receive a free gift worth more than money can buy! Ok, it’s just that feeling you get when you sign up for something awesome hehe
If anyone has an issue with the new site please let me know asap in the comments for this post. I’ll be working on it more during the week to iron out the rough edges.
I’ll also post some more info on how to use it, new features, etc. as soon as I can. I have just run out of time today.
Whooo!
It’s gone a bit quiet in here recently hasn’t it? Don’t worry, we’ll fix that!
Just a very quick update on the new site (Yes I know, just launch it already!):
- Blog imports working
- Forum imports now work pretty much 100%
- Images now being copied over as well
Still have testing to go then its time for the swapdidoo.
I’ll be updating again early this week with some info on what I have been doing with .NET and the OSC (
http://opensoundcontrol.org/ ) protocol. It’s not just for sound anymore!
Hope you guys are all well out there!
What’s this? Another update on Ausrobotics v2???? No your eyes aren’t deceiving you, this is an update!
AR V2 has taken a lot longer than expected unfortunately, mainly due to the fact that I haven’t until now been able to find any good forum software to replace the rubbish that Drupal currently provides (also I have been building a scale model of the most powerful particle accelerator on the planet but that is another story). Early this week I finally found a solution that seems to tick all of the boxes. These boxes are:
- Seamless integration with Wordpress sign-in (you don’t want to log in twice do ya?)
- It actually looks like a semi-traditional forum (unlike things like bbpress/vanilla)
- Good feature set (like email, private messaging, etc)
- Support that won’t disappear overnight (More than one person developing it preferably)
After a lot of looking around I finally settled on Simple: Press Forum [ http://www.stuff.yellowswordfish.com/simplepress-forum/ ].
It has all of the items above and a lot more and it is actually implemented as a wordpress plugin so it integrates more than seamlessly with existing users etc.
It also has a cool feature where you can make a forum post from a blog post and vice versa.
It’s up at http://www.ausrobotics.com if you want to check it out. The themeing is just stock for now and my current import script is slightly broken in that it isn’t mapping the drupal forum posts to the correct topics yet
But I’ll be working on that over the next couple of nights.
The user db has been migrated from here to the new site as well so feel free to sign in and muck around. It will all be wiped on the next migration anyway. Also things could be up and down as I work on em so if anything weird happens that is probably why.
