Robots and Physical Computing

Originally posted as:  http://computingnorthampton.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/waste-as-tool-to-inspire-potential.html in 2012. A recent article in the Northampton  Herald and Post  "  How a university is using waste as tool to inspire students" by Lawrence John discusses the Junkbots project.  " FUNNY looking robots called junkbots could be the key to encouraging more children across the county to become engineers, computer programmers or scientists. One force which is driving this idea forward is the University of Northampton. For the past few years, staff from its science and technology department have been going out to primary and secondary schools to spread the word that science is fun. By working with schools, the university hopes to show pupils a different side to computing and hopefully raise their interest in what they can achieve " Lawrence John For the whole article  click here .this takes you to the Newspaper site...

This is an update of the an earlier post. As a little experiment with the  Oculus Rift  I wondered if I could view a Minecraft world through the oculus Rift. The answer is yes and relatively easily (certain easier than I though it was going to be). The Oculus Rift used with this was from the first developer kit, there are some latency issues (you move, it moves slightly later) Download Minecrift from:  https://share.oculusvr.com/app/minecrift Unzip the files and run the installer file. figure 1 You should get something similar to figure 1. All I did then was press OK. Figure 2 Run the Minecraft launcher and create a new profile. After creating a new profile, edit it to change Use version to release minecrift-1.6.4-b12-nohydra which can be found in the drop down menu.  Now save the profile. Play the Minecraft normally, but with the Oculus Rift on (it helps to have two people one wearing the Oculus Rift, the other pressing keys to control the mov...

Translated using Google Translate from  http://robotsandphysicalcomputing.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/gesture-controlled-minecraft-x-wing.html  I apologise if there are any translation issues. Ce poste se fonde sur deux postes précédents et tente de répondre à certains des commentaires très utiles de personnes qui ont essayé cela. J'espère que cela aide. Globalement, le projet se fonde sur un projet antérieur pour obtenir d'un simple X -Wing dans Minecraft sur ​​un Raspberry Pi . Le but était obtenir Python pour construire et déplacer le X -Wing . Les détails de ce projet peuvent être trouvés ici . Révision Principale: Dans ce projet, et le précédent est basé autour de Python 3 exécutant le Raspbian ' Jessie ' Novembre version de l'OS . Aussi les bibliothèques supplémentaires peuvent devoir être ajouter pour obtenir le minecraftstuff (comme ShapeBlock ( ) et MinecraftShape ( ) ) . Détails sur la façon d' obtenir et d'installer ceux-ci peuven...

I  managed to do something I have want to do for a long time, show off social robots; (now I have three goes at it) thanks to the recent purchase of NAO robots by the University of Northampton.  Session 1 In an in-reach STEAM activity day I have had the opportunity to show the robots in action to a group of 8 years olds. As well presenting a short presentation on social robots. Meeting our robots at our #science day for girls pic.twitter.com/0XwllXL40s — Chris Fidler (@Chris_UNPR) March 3, 2016 Meet Smurf and Red at Girls S.T.E.A.M. @UniNorthants @scottturneruon @Changemaker_Hub @nick_petford pic.twitter.com/ZMt07ZrSVh — STEM at UN (@STEMatUN) March 3, 2016 Social robots meet red and smurf from Scott Turner I would be interested to hear how others are using NAOs via comments. Session 2 and 3 I have managed to include a physical example of Social Robots into my teaching. The aim of the session was to teach about social AI, revolving aroun...

Recent had a great time playing with a MakeyMakey board (see an example below taken from an Amazon site) with some Beaver Scouts.  The basis of the activity was a very simple scratch program; where the 'space' key (banana number one) played one recording and 'left key' (better know as banana number two) played another recording.  Started with a few drum sounds, but when the session really took off was when they started recording their own sounds. Lots of shouts, shrieks and names but it engaged them…and left me with two very smashed up bananas. Details of the MakeyMakey boards can be found at:  http://www.makeymakey.com/ All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with.