It's basically a floating head that others have customized with more functionality (e.g. cameras, microphones, screens, control with a phone) for research applications in human-robot interaction (education, telepresence, an assistant for ADHD task-focusing and CBT). We ran ~90 minute bot-building workshops for middle schoolers; they all successfully completed their robots and seemed to enjoy the hands-on experience.
Wow, really impressed with this! I'm sure my kids would absolutely love to build something like this, just as I would :)
Is there some kind of guide available? I've never built something like this before, but have some XP with Rpi and breadboarding. Oh, and I don't have a 3D printer.
Regarding sourcing the parts, there are online services available to order 3D-printed parts as you would a PCB. The *.stl files are available in the wiki. Though with how accessible 3D printers have become — the well-supported Ender 3 is available for under $100 at Micro Center — you may want to consider taking up printing as a family activity.
"Assembly Instructions - how to build a Blossom. In our experience, this takes about 2-3 hours for first-timers once you have all the parts cut and printed."
This is just my opinion but I feel it would be clearer if you wrote something like:
For a first-timer who can crochet or knit it might take:
1. 1-2 hours to cut the wooden parts
2. 1 hour to print the 3D parts
3. 2-3 hours to assemble the 'skeleton' of the robot
I've been working on a redesign of a small robot platform I designed in grad school ( https://github.com/psychomugs/r0b0 ). We designed the robot as a small robot construction kit for other researchers and roboticists, and is basically a floating head under a fabric exterior. My last research project used the robot as a tabletop motion-controlled telepresence device accessible through a no-downloads mobile browser.
I never had the time to polish the platform so I did a ground-up hardware and software refactor. The hardware was redesigned as an homage to popular snap-fit robot model kits, with runner layouts and instructions ( https://github.com/psychomugs/r0b0/blob/main/docs/assets/bls... ).
I've tried to generalize the software as an `aconnect` for non-robot-specific hardware devices. The software powers this digital back I designed for my >50-year old Leica M2 ( https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/leica-mpi-a-pi-zero-retrofi... ) and enables quick prototyping of physical IO, e.g. using a MIDI keyboard to control motors or a gaming joystick to control a mouse.
It's mostly a passion project to refine the platform into something more usable than how it was left, but I'm open to suggestions or beta testers!
Not an official startup, but I developed an open-source laser cut and crocheted social robot platform during grad school. We ran a few workshops for ~middle schoolers to build it and there are a few built by other researchers and roboticists out in the wild.
I've been making origami bookmarks since elementary school [1]. Recently I've been making them out of ephemera, e.g. old coupons, the receipt for the book itself.
I read somewhere - I can't remember where - that the expression "other people" was at the time (written during the German occupation) a euphemism for German soldiers. I don't know if this is true and I've never actually read No Exit so maybe there's no softening the phrase but it could be that there's some nuance there.
Now more than ever, it would behoove photo-makers and -viewers - i.e. everyone - to read Sontag's "In Plato's Cave" as a reminder that there is nary a thing as a real photograph.
https://github.com/hrc2/blossom-public
It's basically a floating head that others have customized with more functionality (e.g. cameras, microphones, screens, control with a phone) for research applications in human-robot interaction (education, telepresence, an assistant for ADHD task-focusing and CBT). We ran ~90 minute bot-building workshops for middle schoolers; they all successfully completed their robots and seemed to enjoy the hands-on experience.