RoboFest 7 Program

Robot Group Projects, Art
and Technology Exhibits

Project Descriptions

Susan Alexander:

CARTWHEELS
Cartwheels are a collection of characters mounted on rotating shafts. As they turn they appear like circus acrobatic clowns performing for an audience.

NERVOUS PEOPLE
Susan has also designed another performance piece called Nervous People which are characters on radio controlled platforms that move around stage briefly and then "spaz out". These pieces are some of a series of theatrical robots and performance art being designed for an upcoming stage performance. Brooks Coleman is directing the robot theatre movement.

Steve Brudniak:

THREE INTERACTIVE WORKS OF ART
A master of incorporating modern and antiquated technology, Steve will present three interactive pieces to stimulate your senses and expand your mind.

"Model for a Tumultuous Subconscious" -Hidden gyro within a disk that can be manipulated by the viewer. The piece uses an electric meter.

"Cerebrum Lavatio" -translates literally as "Brain Wash", which will demonstrate several hydraulic effects including liquid molecular adhesion and surface tension.

"Instrument for the Transformation of Paleographic Memory" - Will demonstrate fiber optic effects on memory. L.E.D.s are components of this piece.

Brooks Coleman:

TAI CHI CHARLIE
Tai Chi Charlie is basically one of the Tai Chi Arm robots with a set of eyeballs that can move. The eyes can move side to side and up and down. A remote controlled device strapped to the head of the actor/operator controls the movement of the eyeballs on Charlie. The Tai Chi arm gripper is now the mouth for Tai Chi Charlie. This piece is a one of a series of theatrical robots actors being designed for the stage by Brooks Coleman.

GREAT WALL OF GIZMOS
Chaos music performance and interaction with the ever expanding mechanical maze of the great wall.

TV EYES
Another telepresence robot face. The robot's eyeballs are two 4 inch TV's which pick up video projection from two pixel vision cameras mounted on goggles aimed at the actor/operator's eyes.

FISH FACE by David Santos and Brooks Coleman
Fish Face is a sculpture created by David Santos. The robot face has been mounted to the front of Brook's Shark Blimp. Fish Face is twice the size of a normal life size face yet weighs less than 1/4 oz. including servos and sonar element. The eyes are scan capable and are intended to house microvideo cameras.

Butch Edwards:

3D VISION R/C CONTROLLED ROBOT
The components of this project are 2 color cameras and 2 transmitters mounted on a R/C car which project their images back to 2 miniature TV's on the viewer's helmet. Each camera and transmitter are broadcasting and receiving independent signals so the images projected on the the miniature TV's are 3D images.

ROBOT KITS
A collection of robotic kits which demonstrate various robotic controlled movement. There are six variations on the controlled movement theme in this exhibit. Included are an insect walking robot and a robotic arm. There is also a robot controlled by an on-board PC, which is aware of its environment.

Bill Craig:

BABBLING ROBOT HEAD by Brooks Coleman, Bill Craig and Alex Iles
A prime example of our group's efforts to meld art and technology. Natural carved woods are combined with an exhibit controller board that operate a series of hobby servo motors that move the lips, eyeballs and neck areas.

HEXAPOD WALKER by Bill Craig & Brooks Coleman
One prototype leg for a large hexapod walking machine that is being constructed of polystyrene composite material.

C.R.A.S.H.

C.R.A.S.H.
The Computer, Robotics & Arts Society of Houston will be exhibiting their work in robotics and virtual reality.

DIGITAL THEATRE by C.R.A.S.H. and Robot Group Members
Long term collaboration between these two groups to create virtual personae over networks. A mix of physical and media robots will perform experimentally.

Don Colbath:

HOVERCRAFT '96
This year's attempt to lift your off your feet. Constructed of an inner tube and a 8 hp vacuum blower it creates just enough air pressure flow to make riders hover.

TUNE TONE
Electronically controlled music instrument.

GIZMO BOX
Crate with assorted sight, sound and motion experiments.

HAND SHAKER
High powered hand buzzer.

HEX WALKER
Hexwalker was built from a kit produced by M & T Systems in Huntington Beach California. The body is made of perforated circuit board material. It has three R/C type servos driving the legs and a Basic Stamp for a brain. Antennae on the front sense obstacles and after a few steps in reverse send the creature off on another direction. The method used to obtain the alternating triangle gait is ingenious in its simplicity in that it can do with three servos what usually takes at least three per leg.

Glenn R. Currie:

DWEEBVISION
The Dweebvision vehicle is a radio controlled toy car, equipped with Pixelvision video camera and transmitter. The person at the control station sees and hears the world in Dweebvision, and can control the car as it navigates its surroundings by viewing a monitor.

ROBOTIC MOBILE PLATFORM
The Robotic Mobile Platform (RPM) is a heavy duty test-bed for a wide variety of robotic experiments. After building the Dweebvision Telepresence Robot as cheaply as possible as a proof of concept, Glenn Currie, Vadim Konradi and Carlos Puchol devoted a great deal of effort to build a larger and more robust platform on which to mount sensors and actuators. The RMP is round and 24" in diameter, from a top view. It can carry in excess of 300 lbs. of payload for more than 4 hours.

The restricted base diameter allows the RMP to fit through normal doors and it can make use of handicap ready buildings by driving up wheel chair ramps thus giving the robot considerable capability to travel outside the typical lab environment.

The RMP uses radio MODEMs for telemetry back to a base station computer, running the Linux system with X-Windows. The operator may drive the robot by using a joy stick on the base station and watching a live video picture appearing on an optional X-Window.

MEGABOT ROBOT ARMY by Glenn Currie and Normal Annal
The Megabot robot series is a design for a multi-purpose Utility Robot. Its design is similar to a toy robot, but on a much larger scale. The design specifications call for the robots to be made of plastic eventually, but the prototypes are being made of cardboard. Plans are for different models that will range in height from 8 to 24 feet tall. Sensors will provide an array of interesting sounds and dazzling light effects.

Bob Ross assisted in the CAD design work and Doug King , of Capital City Container who has adopted this project, assisted in providing materials and CCC's computer controlled cutter.

Tom Davidson & Sonia Santana:

ROBOVISION
A quick virtual reality (VR) hacked project that provides a possible view of a robot's vision. The project's components are two VictorMaxx Stuntmaster VR headsets which have their video inputs wired to microvideo cameras which then pick up other telepresence bot video feeds.

SCHWA STAY AWAKE SUMOU ROBOT
A competitor from the RoboFest 5 Sumou robot competition returns to run circles around kids in hot pursuit. Inspired by Bill Barker's Schwa drawings the bumper sticker on the backside of this bot reads "Whatever Happens Do Not React!".

Alex Iles:

LASER SCANNER by Alex Iles & Bill Craig
The Robot Group's laser scanner effort seeks to hack a state of the art proximity mapping system on a shoestring budget. Engineers, Bill Craig and Alex Iles, are building on previous experience in robotics research with the Odetics gantry mounted laser scanner.

Vadim Konradi:

THE MOBILE PLATFORM is a series of developmental prototypes that are the design work of Vadim Konradi. The Platform is a general purpose robot base. The mobile platform project is designed to provide ground-based mobility to experimental sensor and control systems, allowing them to traverse level surfaces such as building floors, and possibly streets and backyards. Think of it as a Hero robot on steroids.

Fred Mitchum:

SPACE AGE AMBIENT MUSIC Austin's favorite ambient space age musician. Fred is the court theme musician to The Robot Group. Appearance on Sunday afternoon only.

North Shore Circuit Designs:

BRAIN/TECH by Paco Xander Nathan and Bill Craig
A demonstration of video processing for pattern analysis. Images are taken and are used to provide recognition templates. These templates are then used to recognize objects in a new video stream.

Marcos Novak & Crew:

DANCING WITH THE VIRTUAL DERVISH: WORLDS IN PROGRESS
"In its present disincarnation, consists of a series of interconnected cyberspace 'chambers.' Each chamber is a world unto itself, but each chamber has portals to every other chamber, forming a fully connected lattice. As a work, it is non-hierarchical, non-teleological, and inherently open-ended. A person navigating through these chambers is free to explore a series of landscapes and to discover their apparent or hidden features. It is unlikely that anyone, myself included, will ever exhaust the variety of subtle algorithmic wonders that may be encountered, since they are intimately related not only to the logic of their programs, but to the unforeseeable circumstances and patterns of each person's passage through the spaces." -M.N.

The demonstration of the Worlds in Progress will occur at Sutton Hall on U.T.'s campus which is very near to Dobie Mall. In addition Mr. Novak is scheduled to speak at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon in the Speakers Room (Suite #130) at Dobie Mall.

Zachary Pettichord

Zach's robot is called R-24.

"I made this robot because of my interest in Legos. This robot is equipped with motorized treads and weapons necessary for survival. I am ten years old and go to Brentwood Elementary."

David Santos & Friends:

PROTOANDROID by David Santos and Brooks Coleman
This partially completed humanoid robotics test bed is intended to explore various aspects of "android" design.

HYPERHUMANOID (H2) by David Santos and Brooks Coleman
A super fast robot platform originally developed for martial arts training.

ORCA (aka Commander Salamander)
High performance Micro-Blimp. The fastest and most acrobatic video blimp ever built.

VARMINT and PIT BULL by David Santos and Brooks Coleman.
The oldest robots of the robot group stable, still kicking and biting. Varmint was initiated as the flagship project for Silicon Barrio and completed within the Robot Group.

MOBILE OUTREACH LAN
An Internet oriented multi-media computer network on wheels that rolls into under served communities for hands-on exposure to high technology. The LAN is also the prototype base station for the ProtoAndoid's network architecture.

SILICON BARRIO
Founding members of the group, a precursor group to The Robot Group, and Polycosmos, a techno culture Web domain will show off web stuff from Austin's cutting edge and do on-site Web raising for Austin nonprofit public service organizations.

CHICANO FIELD OPERATIONS COMMAND CENTER
A sort of mid-eighties mobile street NORAD controlling Silcon Barrio projects including the Robotic Tower and early Varmint. This project has not been publicly displayed since RoboFest 1.

ROBOTS OF THE FUTURE WALL MURAL
Three large panels showing a variety of robot concepts as conceived in the eighties. This mural resided for several years on the wall at Discovery Hall, Austin's former science center.

THE FLYING SPHERE AIRCRAFT/VIDEO by George Parks and David Santos.
It looks like a UFO, but flies much like a regular plane.

BIPEDAL ORNITHOPTER & ORIGINAL SWIMMING FISH VIDEO
The Ornithopter blimp was the first aircraft to run on two legs and flap its wings to take flight. This blimp was featured on The Discovery Channel and Good Morning America TV shows.

EARLY ROBOT GROUP HISTORY
Display of early Robot Group videos, photos, clippings, posters and T-shirts from earlier years.

Pete Sevcik:

TECHNO-STUFF ROBOTICS
Building robots and cars from lego bricks and controlling them from a home PC via a wireless infra-red link.

Alex Stohl:

REACTION ROBOT
It's LED (Light Emitting Diode) eyes blink and it makes a buzzing noise when it runs into something. It's operated by remote control. It moves forwards and backwards-right. Alex assembled the electronics by following an illustrated diagram. In the buzzer circuit he used a mercury switch. A mercury switch is a tube filled with mercury. On one side of the tube is two prongs. When the head tilts forwards, the mercury flows over the two prongs and completes the circuit. The LEDs are connected to a LED flasher chip and a capacitor. The robot moves via a remote-controlled car chassis. The antenna sticking out of the robot's head is the antenna to the car.

Tim Stone:

NEGATIVE HEAD
Part of the planned robot theatre production project being directed by Brooks Coleman. Negative Head is made from street lamp parts and servos. It creates face movements by overlaying transparent patterns on grids.

Ed Travis:

SHARK ROBOT
Featured on Jim Swift's "Back Porch" segment, Channel 36 KXAN, this robot has created quite a stir in local waters. A six foot robotic shark which can swim and has the ability to dive. The robot's movement and ability to dive is controlled with bladders. A trolling motor powers the robot. Video of the robot swimming will be presented. (We didn't have a tank big enough to do a live demonstration.)

U.T. Rube Goldberg Competition Team:

The Univeristy of Texas - American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) entry into this year's National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest at Purdue. The 47-step machine and its crew won third place. The machine based on Wile E. Coyote's dream of catching the Road Runner will make be on hand for demonstrations. "Road Runner the Coyote is after you ..Beep Beep!"

Greg Chandler who led the team will be on hand to brief the audience on the machine's design and the Rube Goldberg competition. His talk is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. on Saturday in the Speaker's room (Suite #130) Dobie Mall.

John Witham & Karen Pittman

MANDALA SYSTEM
Creators of a Musi-Graphic Hyperinstrument using external VR or the Mandala System. Designed to provide interactive interface for producing music and controlling computer graphics by interpreting body movements.

The Robot Group

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