The end of an era

Posted on 2009-06-12 by M. Eric Carr

TV in the US goes digital today.

As someone who has seen firsthand the magic that the Digital Revolution has brought us, I know that this is a Good Thing(tm). As a card-carrying Paleotechnologist (not to mention child of the 70’s), though, I can’t help feeling a little nostalgic for good old analog TV.

TV was simpler then — in Northern Virginia, our TV choices were channels 4, 5, 7, 9, 20, and 26 (plus some UHF channels if we aimed the antenna just right and occasionally channel 3 from Richmond if we aimed the antenna right *and* the moon was in the seventh house yadda yadda.)

Not better, mind you — just simpler. Paleotechnologist or no, I still wouldn’t give up our age of TiVo, YouTube, Hulu, DVDs, and flat-panel screens — even if the 70s did have better music.

Loran is probably next. They already did away with Omega, and with the Galileo navigation system coming online, there will be an alternative to GPS.

At least we technological dinosaurs will have our memories — from watching Sesame Street on a 1975 Ford TV (which I still have and which still works!), to navigating from Norfolk to Milwaukee and back with a Compaq Plus suitcase computer and a Loran-C receiver (GPS was for rich folks back then.)

Posted in Digital, Nostalgia | 2 Comments

Quadrupedal locomotion

Posted on 2009-05-09 by M. Eric Carr

Okay, this is unexpected.

I mean, I like old technology and all, but why would an electronics geek — even a Paleotechnologist — be reading a 127-year-old book on The Horse in Motion (with a study on quadrupedal locomotion?)

For a while now, inspired by some cool videos, I’ve been playing with the idea of creating a quadruped robot. The low-level stuff is pretty straightforward; stick a bunch of servos together, connect them with some brackets (3D printers and Google SketchUp are a dangerous combination — more on this later), and control the positions using pulse-width modulation. No problem.

The hard part turns out to be figuring out what joints to move, where, how, fast, and when — especially since the cheap S3003 servos I’m using are not the strongest things in the world.

What I really need is a good automated Physics sim (I’m looking into using Havok, but it’s nontrivial) that I could hitch to a Genetic Algorithm to figure out what gaits work best. The GA part I could do; tying it all in to Havok or a similar simulation may take a while.

Posted in Coding, Digital, Robotics, SIGMA Walking Robot | 1 Comment

Redefining the word innovative…

Posted on 2009-05-06 by M. Eric Carr

Take a look at the work of Theo Jansen. This guy is a paleotech artist par excellence — creating animal-like mechs out of hollow pipes, bottles, and plastic tubing. His “strandbeests” (“beach creatures”) are fascinating; he claims to have actually reinvented the wheel with the unique motion scheme they use — and he might be right.

The really interesting part, for me (and probably the reason why the strandbeests’ motion looks so natural and fluid), is that Jansen uses a genetic algorithm to design these creations.

His eventual goal is to have the ‘beests roam the beaches of Holland, living off of the wind and using their simple mechanical nervous systems to avoid dangers such as the ocean surf, dry sand, and storms.

I came across his work this evening while judging some student projects built for a freshman Engineering Technology course. One of the projects used a walker mechanism based on Jansen’s work.
Kids these days(!)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Techie Litmus Test

Posted on 2009-04-20 by M. Eric Carr

The audience is now divided into two groups: the techno-Muggles are staring at the comic, wondering WTF it’s supposed to mean. The rest of us are laughing hysterically, perhaps literally ROFL*, at the thought of counting sheep using signed integers. Who but Randall Munroe would have thought of a cartoon gag about twos’ complement math?

This is a great example of why XKCD is so cool. Only once in a great while will a comic come along that truly Gets It and shows us another aspect of Truth. Calvin and Hobbes, Non Sequitur, and The Far Side come to mind. This is great stuff. But don’t just take my word for it — take a look at some for yourself!

…and then there’s the Map of the Internet. (Yes, really. It’s a classic.) And also Geohashing — a new meme…

* Note to self: Don’t read XKCD at work anymore, even on break. The Muggles will hear you laughing for sure!

Posted in Humor | 2 Comments