[Robotgroup] Drive a Droid proposal...

[Taisha Markov]

As far a photo ops are, see if there is a local Star Wars fan group.
They could get out their costumes (C3P0?).

The Star Wars group participates in a family-friendly Halloween event
thrown by the local zoo. They do a pretty good job save for the
Sith/emo/goth types. Let's face it. If you aren't a featured character
in the movies, you are nothing.

Robot Safety:
I am currently involved in safety-critical design here at work. One of
the features I have is REDUNDANCY. Also, if the remote power kill
switch is pressed, it can only be reset by going to the equipment and
manually resetting it there. Most of my design is centered around
preventing a single event upset (SEU) from causing a mishap. Features
like: actively driven differential signals are required to mask
critical events, default state is a safe state, "negative logic" such
that signal loss (ie.:broken wires, shorts to ground) will force a
safe state, use only anti-fuse FPGAs, and so on. I can go over the top
here. How "safe" do you want to be?

While having safety-oriented intelligence built into the robot is a
great, nothing beats having a couple of live observers (referees?)
holding a remote kill switch.



Cheers,
Mark

PS: did this email make it through? Any more HTML? Lycos support sucks
- I got what I paid for.


On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 12:59 PM, john at cozmicfunk.com
<john at cozmicfunk.com> wrote:
> Even better, I have this set in storage I built years ago for the Star Wars
> episode III premier:
> http://www.cozmicfunk.com/SciFiSet.html
>
> You could use that for your backdrop (minus the Boba Fett), it could be
> arranged in a semi circle because it has four panels. I was using this for
> First Night proposal years ago and it never flew, The group would have to be
> responsible for moving it etc.
>
> I would be happy to loan it to the group since you guys have been generous
> to me :)
> John
>