Joe Wong’s Blog

The aim of the intelligent robotics module was to create an autonomous robot which performed a set task. We decided upon the rubbish collection task.

The main chasis was constructed using Lego. To perform the sensing and thus enable us to perform intelligent processing we were given the following discrete components: sensors, motors, servo motors, shaft encoders, LED’s and LDR’s which all connected into an intellibrain board.

Before the components could be integrated into a prototype they had to be characterised, i.e. we had to find out how they worked and how reliable they were. We also had the challenge of desgning a robot and guessing (as we had no real previous experience) where each component should go. We came to the final design (below) through several stages of prototyping.

The final design was done in MLCAD (Mike’s Lego CAD), it doesn’t include the components however it does give a good approximation of our final design.

After reading an Indian cooking book which I purchased about 2 years ago I decided that it was time for me to try out some of the recipes. The first one I’m sharing here is the recipe for Paneer mostly because it’s very easy to make and is a nice addition to curries.

Requirements

To make the Paneer you will require: 6 pints of milk, Juice of 1 lemon and a piece of Muslin cloth (about 1m by 1m).

Instructions

1. Start by heating the milk up till boiling.

2. Stir in the lemon juice until the milk starts to curdle.

3. When you have large lumps of milk curdling you can then drain the mixture through a muslin cloth.

4. Leave to hang for about 3 hours. This will drain most of the liquid. Although 7 hours is recommended.

5. As most of the liquid is now drained there will be a bit of liquid left. Here the Paneer is compressed using as many tins as I can pile on top to remove excess liquid.

6. The Paneer is now ready. It should be just like a medium-soft cheese, easy to cut into square pieces and ready to eat, fry into a curry or store in the fridge.

What not to do!

My initial attempt at this was to cut back on the quality of ingredients used… big mistake! I used Long life semi-skimmed milk with 1 jiff lemon. The texture of the Paneer was fine however the flavour was very nutty… not nice. When made with fresh ingredients the Paneer has a much smooth texture and non-nutty taste.

The following are a few pictures from the canal walk to university, thought they’d be nice to post.

It’s a very nice walk on a dry day but still doable on a rainy day.

The 3D image above is my quick attempt at something rather familiar, Lego. It took about 1 hour to create the model and about 2 mins to render using Blender and yafray. Below are my comments on the rendering:

• I added 4 lamps to illuminate the whole object (the 1 starting lamp wasn’t enough) and also the gaps between the blocks, I think this adds a more realistic feel to the picture.
• As you may also see the proportions of circular extruded parts aren’t perfect either, they don’t actually line up with each other like real Lego does and so won’t actually fit together. This is visible in the left hand corner of the block.
• Each piece is a clone of the next, therefore all I’ve effectively created are 4 walls rather then a block, how misleading!

My next attempts will be to make more proportionally sized pieces, create other parts missed out and put it all together to create a robot.

This Thursday I saw the 9th annual Vale fireworks display which was put on by the University of Birmingham. It was an enjoyable 20 mins display with a view I’ve not seen for quite a while, definitely well worth it.

Update:

Pictures from the event:

My new team HCI project blog can be found here. Our aim is to design a product for students new to University. We will document our progress (or currently lack of :P).

Please feel free to share your comments on the blog.

Hello and welcome to my new blog. Content on the way!