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Welcome to the Winter '07 update. Now that the Darpa Grand Challenge is behind us, I have been able to scale things back a bit and start working on some old unfinished projects. This is not to say I have abandoned the Coyote Autonomous Ground Vehicle project- I continue to move forward with that, and as it stands now, I have a pretty cool little car that can drive itself out of my garage, down to the end of the street and back very reliably.

I hope that systems such as the Coyote UGV will find uses in the many areas where remotely and autonomously operated vehicles are deemed to be a safe alternative to a human presence. Such areas could include: disaster/urban search and rescue, wildland firefighting support, patrolling of hazardous areas, detection and disposal of land mines, etc.

I am still looking to post more pictures and video to our DARPA Grand Challenge/Coyote UGVs pages. Now that the bulk of the work with the project is complete, I have time to get some of this material posted to this website. I have posted several new pictures of my other robots on the newly reorganized Robot Pages. Take a look there for pictures of the Javelina test vehicle- the downsized cousin of the Coyote UGV.

My R2-D2 replica is once again "under the knife" as I prepare him for a date with destiny- he has been requested to participate as ring bearer in a wedding. In order to look his best, R2 is getting new holographic projector lenses, thanks to my friends at www.Astromech.net, as well as a new rear logic display. Once these latest cosmetic upgrades are complete, I will post some new pictures to the Robot Gallery.

 We are still busy with the long-term refurbishment of the Dinosaur Canyon exhibit at the Tucson Children's Museum. The museum staff has recently renamed the exhibit to "Dinosaur World". This exhibit has been running daily for over 6 years now, and it is getting much needed improvements on the mechanical and control systems, as well as new skins for the three smaller dinosaurs. We finished the skin replacement on the Kentrosaurus, and this and other new pictures of the dinosaurs can be seen on the main Photo Gallery.

Soon I hope to post information on the newest robot I am building- It is a multipurpose tracked platform designed mostly for law enforcement and hazardous materials identification. I started working on this after getting inquiries about the possibility of using my Tortoise 6-Wheel Drive Rover for law enforcement applications. The Tortoise is great in the dirt and rocks, and yes, it will climb stairs, but it does so neither smoothly nor quietly. After attempting to navigate stairs remotely by video, I decided it was time to build a new robot specifically for that purpose.

Again as I had mentioned above, I rearranged some of the pages on this website to make them easier to navigate. All the robot related material is now in its own section, with its own photo gallery. I have done short write-ups on each of my robots, but I hope to turn each of those into their own more detailed web pages.

Till Next Time - Rob


Updated 19 Feb 07