me135 open house

yesterday was the open house for the me135 class at uc berkeley, which officially holds the title of "design of micro-processor based mechanical systems." having audited the class and at the same time helped with the teachings and demonstrations and all, i was proud to see almost all the projects working or very close to it. here are some of the highlights/my favorites from the demo day yesterday:


an automatic etch-a-sketch robot. the software grabs any image, digitizes it to different shades of gray, and using different line spacings, draws the image. quite impressive. although it still needed some work.




"ben" the automatic chess playing robot. this one exceeded a lot of the expectations because it was very well done. the bot can play itself, play a human, and repopulate the board. the software is also very well written, and the gui quite impressive. something i learned during the demo of this robot: en passant




"a.r.m.s." the automatic mail sorter. this one reads the labels on the mails, and sorts them into different bins. the idea was not original, however it worked very well.




"battle duckies!!" if you ever played war in 5th grade, this would be your dream toy. two players each sit on a separate computer, and are able to move their ducky around, and shoot the other players ducky. taking turns, they shoot the air soft gun by clicking a region of the opponents war zone, which only shows the parts that have already been clicked.




autonomous helicopter, "s.p.a.r.r.o.w." (yes, that actually stands for something, dont ask me what.) a work in progess, this one is a shared project between the eecs department and the me department. they were able to get the helicopter lift off autonomously, which is quite impressive. there is a lot of controls going into that, which is not easy to describe. you can just trust me on that one.




the future of laptop cases (and also other electronics), this ongoing research project aims to someday provide us with laptop charging cases, using piezoelectric material. so imagine walking around with your laptop in your backpack, and as youre doing that, your laptop is getting charged. cool eh?




"fire" the automatic fire extinguisher. this one uses infrared sensors to detect fire, go close to the fire using a holonomic drive (which is a system that allows the robot to move in any direction freely,) and shoot some sort of fire retardant. it was quite well done, and the holonomic drive was very impressive.




the automatic drink mixer. imagine youre at a bar. instead of having to go to the counter and dealing with crowds and bartenders, you can pull out your phone, and order your drink from a list of already available options, or make up your own drink. in a couple of minutes, you get a text message with a code, saying your order is ready. you go the counter, punch in your code, and get your drink! the machine also does all the mixing, no bartenders needed. i guess you dont need to tip anymore, do you?