Robotics
Since I've retired, I've had time to indulge my longtime interest in robotics.
Silicon Valley Homebrew Robotics Club
In 2006 I joined the Homebrew Robotics Club in Silicon Valley. Currently, I am the coordinator of the SIG.
FIRST
In 2003 I became involved in FIRST by becoming a mentor to FRC Team 1120 at Milpitas High School. Here are some of the robots I've worked on with the kids there. In 2009 we decided to discontinue mentoring at Milpitas for a number of reaons.
Locally, every year we have the FIRST Silicon Valley Regional held at San Jose State University. Here are the pictures I took in 2010.
WRRF
Since 2006 I've been pretty active with the Western Region Robotics Forum, WRRF. Ok, the name is weird but apparently it was decided by a committee of high school students. Every year the WRRF puts on a local competition called CalGames so the high school teams can have a second venue to show off their FIRST robots. Over the years CalGames has grown and currently has become space and time contrained so participation is limited to only 36 teams. Now there is always a wait list of teams trying to compete.
These are the pictures of the 2008 and the 2009 competitions.
DARPA Urban Challenge
One of the most interesting robotic things I've done is attend the DARPA Urban Challenge held November 3, 2007 at the former George Air Force Base in beautiful Victorville, California. I would have been surprised after the performances in the 2004 and 2005 Grand Challenges if any of the robots could have navigated the course successfully running it alone but I was truly amazed to see eleven robots running the course dodging each other and thirty human driven cars with six robots successfully completing all the legs. Boss, from Tartan Racing, a consortium of Carnegie Mellon University and their corporate partners took the $2 million first prize. Junior, from Staford University was just edged out and won the $1 million second prize. Unfortunately, while Ohio State was a semifinalist, they didn't make the final cut. My pictures are on the web here.