Robotic's Meeting Improvements

Hello again!

I tell you guys that I got to do a lot of my projects this week.  For my statistics project I handed out the surveys to different classes and I got them back within this week! The good thing about having many of them is that the more data points I have the better results I can get, I suppose. I been tutoring at the math zone for a couple of weeks now but this week I got do help more than one student; I like to help J

But what I liked the most about this week was the robotics meeting. Originally, I had sat down with some students and we were trying to come up with a new design for a mini bot that could be used as a backup robot for the upcoming VEX competition in March. Although I was not planning on it, I ended up spending most of the time helping another team mate do some adjustments to an existing robot. We made various improvements. First of all, the aluminum arm (that will be used to pick up the bean bags) was altered. We removed some pieces off and rebuilt it; making it lighter. We also verified places were parts were not symmetric which could ultimately affect the center of gravity of the robot. In addition, we hooked it up and verified that all the changes we had made had not affected the robot’s functionality. Luckily, it worked out great! Though it is not programmed yet not it is finished, we made good advances and I cannot wait to see it on the field.

As you know Kristina is also in robotics, which is awesome. She was assigned to come up with a design that withholds stability. She asked if I could help her out but unfortunately I will not be attending PC next semester. So, if any of you know how to use AutoCAD, know a little bit of programming or are dying to help her out, go right ahead; I am pretty sure she would love some help J

I leave you with an image of a “dremel;” tool I got to use in robotics this week to cut some excess of aluminum off the robot! By the way, I tried to incorporate a picture of the mentioned robot but I believe it has been prohibited to post them on the blog. Stay tuned...

--Yany

UAV's

Dear Blogger followers:

Since my major is aerospace engineering and mathematics I will be dividing my internship experience between Robotics and Mathematics. Therefore you will get a little bit of variety on my posts. I have not officially begun my project but I will this week. In the mean time I would like to share with you a topic that interests me: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs).

It is indeed true that an aircraft like this is characterized for not having a human pilot on board. But actually, UAVs are more than that. The whole idea is that they navigate “autonomously,” or without human interaction. We have gone from not having technology at all, to having it and using it to ease our daily life tasks, to now trying to teach those technological apparatuses to be like us humans. Will there ever be a day in which robots would be able to be their own beings? Being not only able to perform mathematical algorithms extremely complicated in fractions of seconds but also to have feelings such like we humans do? Creepy, isn’t it?

If such a day were to come, I am certain that it will not be any time soon. However, we cannot ignore the tremendous technological advances we are making when it comes to robots. An autonomous robot ideally should think by itself but it does not, yet. It has to be programmed to be able to used equipment integrated to it to perform a specific task. A flying robot, for example, uses sensors to control altitude, a sonar, which is an acronym for Sound Navigation And Ranging, to communicate with or detect objects, cameras to search, view and record, a computer to communicate with a ground station and most importantly a computer software that allows it to understand what to do and how.

Although it is true that the government is interested in using such vehicles for the military, there are also a lot fields UAVs can be implemented on including: law enforcement (border patrolling), aviation, and agriculture.

--Yany

    

Hello everyone!

My name is Maria Yanitzin Ochoa but since my first name is so common, I make most people call me "Yany," which is a short nickname derived from my middle name.

I am the youngest of two daughters from my mother side and number 11th from my father side, he had two marriages before marrying my mother.

Thus, I have a BIG and LOVING family.

I grew up in Mexico and moved to Phoenix about five years ago. Once I moved here I started to get more familiarized with Robotics. Actually, in Mexico the only time I played with tools, like I started to do in high school, was at my father's workshop. But again, I want you to understand that even though the move was a challenge the tradeoff was worth it: playing with technology.

I have been in Phoenix College since the fall of 2010. When I first started, I tried to do robotics but I did not continue. Now I am ready to continue doing here at PC something that I enjoy doing:  robotics :)

--Yany