Wot u do!

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We had a special meeting of the high school SciTech club this week. Not only did we have an hour, not only were the students allowed to miss another lesson, but we got our Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicles in the swimming pool! And they all worked The pictures below were captured from my own ROV...

Together with colleagues from Microsoft UK and Microsoft Research I attended the Think Computer Science event today. Think Computer Science is an annual event by Microsoft Research in Cambridge, to inspire local high school students to follow a scientific or engineering education path. Over 600 children...

In order to manufacture some custom parts required for one of my submersible projects I have had to purchase a small metal work lathe This will allow me to turn the section headers and seals required by my ‘Robo-Float’. Inspired by the Argo floats , my robo-float will be used to survey local inland lakes...

As the opener for the new high school SciTech club I took along several of my robots: A1DW Eddie Sphero and my DIY Drone’s Quadrocopter All the above robots except for the Quadrocopter are ‘differential drive’ robots. That means they are driven by two motors which can steer the robot ‘like a tank’ or...

My local high school has invited me to lead a new Science and Technology club. I’ve eagerly accepted the role but now I need to find a project to get the members excited. The club is on a Monday lunch time for only 25mins – not a lot of time – so a project that can return quick results is required. The...

Slipping out at the end of May was the R3 release of Microsoft RDS. I’ve played with RDS since the early days, but my time has been occupied lately with mobile phones. But the most significant change with RDS is that it is now FREE – not more express, standard or academic editions. RDS is now built for...

And whilst I exercise my iRobot fan-boy status, here’s an iRobot promo video. Awesome robotic fun - I am so in the wrong job ;-)

I like this.

At Maker Faire UK I wanted to have an exhibit anyone could interact with. So I took along my robots and modified one of the Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS) Visual Programming Language (VPL) examples to allow both speech and Xbox controller control of them. Note to product teams: shorter product...