I am teaching a computer software development course. So far the students are working on a web server development project with some very advanced features. While on a research trip to the US last week, I managed to swing a deal with a major ISP to purchase all of the working assignments from those students who are willing, for a whopping $440,000 USD plus royalties. The exact revenue to be returned per person is hard to predict since our university will probably keep about 95% according to their IP policy, but that should still leave an interesting revenue per person.
The students need to vote on the proposal, get a 85% majority, and provide their source code. Then a team of team get to accompany me to Orlando at their own expense to provide the needed deployment team get get everything running and integrated into the ISP's web site. The amazing part is that the deployment team gets a bonus of 200 pounds of coffee beans and deodorant to allow them to get the job done on a very accelerated schedule.
The whole package was finalized today, April 1st.
2007
2007
Just back from Orlando where I gave a colloquium talk at the University of
Central Florida (I talked about the AQUA robot and some of the vision
algorithms we are developing for it). [This was a second trip after a botched visit recently.] There is a very active computer
vision group there that is really
agressive and productive with many interesting projects on the go. Among other things
they just got a nice DARPA contract for a fleet of flying air vehicles (UGV's) to complement the one they already have.
I took three hours off and made a quick trip to the Kennedy Space Center on the coast.
They have several old rockets and shuttle mock-ups on display. It's kind of interesting, but I am not sure it's worth 2 hours driving and the $35 admission price if you onyl are left with a
single hour to visit. On the other hand, there are various included movies (including IMAX) that I wasn't able to see, and they seem to be key parts of the site. A much more reasonable plan is to take the bus tour(s) of the entire site, but that is both time consuming and requires advance reservations. I did that years ago and found it very worthwhile, plus there is interesting wildlife to see occasionally (such as alligators).
2007
I am at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Rome, and Tandy Trower (general manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group) gave a long presentation pitching Microsoft Robotics Studio to the robotics research community. The reaction was quite mixed. MSRS has a number in interesting features and it promises to help provide a standard easy-to-use interface for robotics enthusiasts and certain researchers. Most importantly, it is an endorsement of robotics as a field that is on the verge of really opening up and having major impact. This is consistent with the recent Scientific American cover story authored by Bill gates. On the other hand, it is a closed proprietary system and it may reduce the amount of innovation in robotics software, if it is successful. This is probably a natural consequence of the maturation of any field, and in particular a software-intensive one, so it is not necessarily a bad things.
Herman Bruyninckx from K.U Leuven (and head of Euron) gave a very spirited rebuttal to Trower and argued that every time Microsoft enters a new market the range of alternative solutions becomes much smaller and more polarized. He was quite provocative and got a very strong level of support from the audience. At present, there are several alternative open source robotics toolkits and packages around.
Part of Trower's presentation included a brief discussion os MSRS 1.5 beta, which will have more features than the current version. Of course, the open source Player/Stage software which is now widely used was also discussed and a call went out that this is a key time to support that effort. All in all, it was one of the most talked-about events at the conference.
Even if MS Robotics Studio fails to get traction with the research community due to functional limitations, it may bias a whole generation of students who eventually do robotics, and thus become an almost-unavoidable presence.
2007
Robots are increasingly being used for warlike purposes. While we are very far from building a robot like the one on the movie "The Terminator", fully automated machine guns have already been deployed between North and South Korea. There are active research projects in several counties aimed at bulidng autonomous combat vehicles, and some of there are close to the point at which they can automatically deliver lethal force. Singapore seems to have a funding competition regarding what seems to be an automatic robot assasin.
In this context, Georgia Tech is running a web-based survey on the use of robots capable of delivering lethal force.
2007
Last Friday I was at the University of Texas at Austin for the doctoral defense of Mohan Sridharan. Mohan's thesis dealt with color recognition and constancy (and re-calibration) for navigation and localization.
A key part of his work deals with adapting to illumination changes. This is accomplished by using a hybrid representation of both color and illumination change, and using different mechanisms to deal with gradual versus sudden changes. He passed comfortably.
The robotics labs there were large and very active. I finally got a chance to ride on a Segway myself, which was surprisingly easy and smooth. Most Segways one finds in robotics labs are not suitable for human riders.
