Tim’s Blog

Possibly the coolest thing ever. Just type “telnet diego.ascii-wm.net 2006″ (or if using linux “nc diego.ascii-wm.net 2006″) into a terminal and enjoy a live ascii broadcast of the World Cup over telnet.

I put up a quick website describing what I am working on. There are 3 images, all taken from the LIDAR scans and converted into a top down height map. I need to get them to mesh somehow into a large image. I have the compass readings when each picture was taken, but the headings not nearly accurate enough to do the splicing based entirely on them. I am thinking about doing the image processing in Java so that I don’t have to mess around with C. Well, that’s where I am at.

My mentor showed up yesterday back early from his trip and I found out what I am going to be doing this summer. I am working with 3 other interns on improving a robot. I will be working with another intern to make the robot stitch the LIDAR scans together into a map of the area. The LIDAR (LIDAR works by scanning with a laser and measuring the time it takes to reflect back) returns a picture of distances from the robot (each pixel of the picture contains a distance value). The code currently translates that picture into a top down map of heights. It is our job to find unique features on the map and match it to another picture. The idea is that the robot can be let loose in an area to make a map, then it can give the map to other robots who can use it to navigate. It should be interesting…

I arrived at work today. My mentor is out of town for the week (I hear he is in Hawaii) so I don’t have a lot to do. Once I figure out what exactly to do, I will be working on a robot that scans its surroundings with LIDAR. It is running with a 133 mHz AMD 586 processor on a pc104 board (website here). The robot is about 2 feet by 3 feet and about 2 feet tall. It moves around on treads and uses its LIDAR to make a map of its surroudings, making a note of any objects of interest.

I have been having fun hanging out with my friends from last year. It has not been too hot yet, so far it has been a very nice temperature. Once I get my room and computers all set up and configured, I will set up a temperature probe (maybe this time with graphs).