SAVE THE DATE
    giovedì
  4 GIUGNO 2015
  ORE 17.30
     AULA MAGNA LICEO FERMI

 

FANTASTICO!!

Ecco il cugino inglese di

Baby-Goldrake :

Robot mind control and other great NAO hacking: NAO Interfaces 2015

Few weeks ago, we did an interview with Mike McFarlane who introduced us the NAO Interfaces Hackathon. This third hackathon, organized by UKNAO, the UK developers group for NAO, took place at Queen Mary University London from 11-12 April.

As mentioned by Mike, the idea of it was “to bring in developers and geeks from other technology areas outside the robotics field in order to cross-pollinate ideas”.
So during this week-end, more than 50 people gathered to connect new devices to NAO and find new ways of interacting with him. They were welcomed by Dave Snowdon, organizer and member of UKNAO, and Kok Ho Huen, teacher at QMUL School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.
Carl Clement, one of the organizer and also member of UKNAO, introduced the available devices and hardwares for the hackathon, notably:

• Activ8rlives Pulse Oximeter Bluetooth 4.0, used to monitor pulmonary and cardiovascular functions
• The Myo Armband by Thalmic labs which tracks arm movements and hand gestures and can also streams EEG data and connects via Bluetooth.
• Emotiv EPOC Brain-computer interfaces. Based on EEG technology, this headset can monitor certain brain activity.
• LightwaveRF, a wireless home automation technology that controls home heating, lighting and power.

As some of the attendees were not familiar with NAO, introductions to the little bot development, and hardware hacking with him, were provided. Meanwhile, teams formed and started developing ideas they had in mind. Until Sunday midday, everyone worked on their project that was going to be revealed and scored at the end of the afternoon.

Angelica and Celine, from Aldebaran, teamed up with Matthias Danzer, a German NAO developer, to control NAO with their mind through the Emotiv headset.

To demonstrate their project, they organized a race with two NAOs, connecting them to Angelica’s and Mike’s brain through Emotiv devices. The calmer a competitor's brain activity was, the faster their robot walked.

“Of course, it's not always easy to stay calm when your robot is falling behind! In the end, Mike won the race!” said Angelica and Celine.

Other great projects were realized by the hackathon teams. Some participants used the Activ8rlives Pulse Oximeter to analyze blood pressure data and give advices via the robots, either calming down the person or advising someone next to him/her. A team also programmed it to monitor breathing blockages during the sleep and send the data to NAO so he could wake up the person. The MYO wristband was programmed by and English team to make the robot help you row. And another team connected NAO to LightwaveRF temperature sensors. And like Aldebaran’s girl added “Overall, the possibilities were endless, especially for health care or special education.”

At the end of the day, the organizers designated two winner teams for the hackathon who came back home with a Emotiv headset.

Every participants seemed very happy about the event, particularly Angelica and Celine. So a big ‘bravo’ and thank you to the UKNAO users group for organizing such a creative and successful event. You can find more pictures of the event on their Flickr. A big thank you also to Ghene Snowdon who took all these great pictures.

#Nao_Challenge_2k15

Sessione deludente al Laboratorio di Robotica dell'Università di Padova :(

Ieri pomeriggio ci siamo recati per la quarta e ultima volta (purtroppo!!) a Ingegneria Informatica per testare i codici della terza e quarta prova.

La delusione è stata grande perché, nel tempo che abbiamo avuto a disposizione, Nao si disconnetteva di continuo e i tempi biblici di riaccensione ci hanno costretti a delle lunghe pause.

 

Le squadre, incalzate dai supporter, hanno però saputo trovare energie alternative e con molta tenacia hanno “imbastito” i movimenti per far salire sul carrellino il Nao.

Ringraziamenti agli sponsor:

Nadia e Gianni della panetteria "Al Prà" di 
Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, 10

Claudio del bar "La Contessa"

Aldebaran pubblica l'intervista al team The Beginners: clicca per leggerla

Raphael Roullet, coordinatore della NAO Challenge 2014/2015, ha chiesto un'intervista ai The Beginners, qui sotto una piccola anteprima!

The Beginners Interview

The Beginners…What a team! Your team looks passionate, full of energy, taking great initiatives, adventurous, fun and ambitious: congratulations, we like it!

Therefore we would like to make an interview of your team. Ready to go on?




(...)

5. Had the NAO Challenge any great impacts on your students, your school, your lessons, your vision of robotics, or anything else?

[Carla] Surely this school year has been permeated by the presence of the Nao: posters relevant to the Challenge organized by Aldebaran are hanging everywhere in the school; we draw some comic balloons, which change periodically, on the posters so that it seems that the Nao speaks to those (students, professors or parents) who are walking along the school corridors. Let’s say, we are changing the way to approach it: it’s becoming a kind of “he” not “it”. In any case, Fermi High School, has already demonstrated much interest in robotics participating for four years in the competition Zerorobotics organized by MIT of Boston and NASA, winning twice the European competition. Knowing that the “space sky spheres” have created a deep and strong interest in our students, we have certainly found a fertile ground with the proposal of the Nao Challenge. And to tell you the truth, we have already taken steps in order to draw up a project, which is already named "Baby - Goldrake", whose main aim is that of introducing robotics in the Paediatric Hospital.

The idea is that of programming the Nao so that he can become a distraction/entertainment for sick children, to release tension before an invasive operation or to make the Nao perform repetitive exercises simply to entertain children playing with him. The head of the Informatics Systems and Innovative Technologies of the "Department of Woman and Child Health of the University - Hospital of Padua", together with paediatricians, neonatologists and engineers of Padua University, will help us in developing this project during the next school year. Obviously, there will be more teams formed by students who are interested in the Nao Challenge 2016 and those who are interested in the "Baby - Goldrake" project. That’s why we think that a well equipped Laboratory of Robotics could be a magnet for all those students who are interested in programming. Moreover, you don’t have to forget that afternoon work done side by side between teachers and students strengthens and motivates the existence of group itself. Then, it allows the teacher to learn and grow together with his students. The method we are following is the Finnish one, which nowadays is considered to be in the forefront.

6. How did you organize the team, your time & the work?

[Michele] As already said by our team – leader, we have arranged meetings in the afternoon, all Wednesday afternoons. And then part of the work has been carried out by each of us at home and then we inform the other members of the team about our progress during information-sharing meetings. The coach of Team Eve, our teacher of Physics, Alvise Moretti, in order to make us understand the importance of collaboration told us about the experience of knowledge sharing between the two teams during America's Cup, the Italian Luna Rossa and the New Zealand Team. The collaboration agreement included the total access to the design and performance data of Emirates Team New Zealand. The hulls of the Luna Rossa AC 72 were built in Italy but all other components were built in New Zealand in close collaboration with Emirates Team New Zealand. Therefore we think that sharing information is a point of strength of our team. For this reason, to be always updated and to know what’s going on we have created a whatsapp group with our coach, a chat in facebook and we regularly exchange e-mails or we communicate through I groups of google+ .... ,as you can imagine, it’s a full-time activity!

Notizie eccellenti dal nostro Consiglio di Istituto,

la componente genitori che si sta distinguendo per dinamismo e lungimiranza pare ci abbia fatto trovare dentro l'uovo una sorpresa eccezionale!!...uno sponsor per il Nao_Enrico-Carletto.

Attendiamo notizie più dettagliate dal signor Ingravalle...a presto! SEGUITECI!!