We've been mentioned on hackaday!

Posted in News on March 3, 2012 No Comments

The DyIO has been mentioned on hackaday, A website that features cool projects involving Robots, Electronics, and tinkering. Many of us here at neuron robotics visit hackaday often and having the DyIO featured has us all grinning. Thanks!

Continue reading

Tutorial: Eclipse Setup for the NRDK

Posted in Highlights Product on February 1, 2012 No Comments

Tutorial: Eclipse Setup for the NRDK

Continue reading

Tips on Assembling the Neuron Robotics Hexapod

Posted in Highlights News Product on December 21, 2011 1 Comments

Tips on Assembling the Neuron Robotics Hexapod!

Continue reading

What Comes in the Neuron Robotics Hexapod Kit

Posted in Highlights Product on November 23, 2011 1 Comments

What Comes in the Neuron Robotics Hexapod Kit!

Continue reading

Mass Challenge and Our Patent

Posted in News on April 13, 2011 3 Comments

We've applied to the 2011 Mass Challenge!

Continue reading

Announcing the First Major Sales of DyIOs

Posted in Announcements on February 23, 2011 2 Comments

Announcing the sale of 190 DyIOs to Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) for the 2012 academic year.

Continue reading

Ice Bot Featuring the DyIO!

Posted in Highlights on February 9, 2011 No Comments

We're thrilled that students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) are using the DyIO in their Major Qualifying Project. Look for the DyIO at about 1:04 on the video.

This is the Auger Driven Ice Surveyor. The video shows initial testing on the prototype auger-drive system, the first movement tests on carpet, and the first outdoor testing.

Continue reading

Mass Innovation Night October 13, 2010 Review

Posted in Events on October 15, 2010 5 Comments

Once again, I attended Mass Innovation on behalf of Neuron Robotics. This time, the event was held at beautiful Fan Pier.
Bobbie Carlton and Dan Englander were our gracious hosts as always. The Mass Challenge incubator space at Fan Pier is fun, with a ping-pong table and numerous "idea walls" filled with the scrawlings of excited, creative folk. Makes you proud to be an entrepreneur!
The lucky presenting companies were as follows:

  • HiveFire - Curata is B2B online marketing and content curation solution. The idea between content curation is to grab content from all over the web and filter it properly and include it on a website or in a newsletter as aggregated content. While many people do this work manually, Curata is intended to automate a lot of this process although the actual, final piece -- a person looking over the content one last time before publishing it -- is still not automated. But it's probably better that way.
  • JoyTunes - They combine actual musical instruments with video games, thereby making it easy and fun for children (and adults!) to learn to play musical instruments. The first application is with a recorder, and they will eventually add the piano to their repertoire. It's hard to explain without a visual, so here's their presentation:
  • Second Glass - Discover new wines, remember what you are drinking and share with friends. They've sold over 2500 tickets to various wine events (Wine Riots) and are going on tour so they will not only be in Boston bvut will also get into DC, Chicago and Los Angeles. They are creating a large online wine database. They even brought some wine to try!
  • Zenesys - Affordable, Actionable Market Intelligence via crowdsourced research. This is all performed online although their researchers may have access to some offline materials. The cost runs from $1,000 for market sizing to $5,000 for competitive landscape analysis up to business analysis work for which you can get a quote.

This month's experts were:
  • Scott Macmillan of Macguffin Games, which makes a new game called Mustache Mercenaries,
  • Joe Ciccolo of Levatura, LLC - due diligence for businesses that don't have the time to perform due diligence on their vendors,
  • Dan Davis of Accounting Management Solutions, which provides outsourced accounting for busy startups,
  • Casey Gustus of High Start Group, which accelerates the market success of innovative products, and,
  • Jay Wilder of My Brainshark, which is an online presentation software tool for business communications and elearning.

The other companies present were:
  • Agree'nSign which makes electronic document signature software
  • Avitage - instantly assemble and deliver digital media programs
  • Bubulu Labs, iYuva - Play. Create. Share. These are games for children, that can be played on smart phones
  • eVisioner - Project Management, Team Governance webapp
  • Penmia - capture your memories. I scored a free trial -- it's kind of like a private scrapbook/diary, online.
  • Red's All Natural - The Best Damn Burrito, period. They looked good but the calorie gods were not in my favor. Next time I'll be sure to make some room as everyone I asked was positively raving about them.

Whenever I go to Mass Innovation, I seem to make new friends, like these fine folks:
  • Networker Extraordinaire Jon Roussel, who blogged about our presentation from the last Mass Innovation. Thanks, Jon!
  • Christopher Austin, a partner at Goodwin Proctor,
  • Dan Kriegsman, who is a patent attorney
  • Richard Turcott of HiveFire. He had this little flame thing that was mesmerizing.And,
  • Eleanor Howe - is there anything she doesn't do? But her blog is what's really fun. Go take a peek and check out her takes on cocktails, Mad Men and the all-around scene in our fair metropolis.

Plus I saw many old friends:
  • Ben Hron, who is an attorney who helps startups get to angel and venture capital funding. He's always kindly interested in what we're doing.
  • Joe Lima who reminded me about The Community Roundtable. But now that's my day to go into Worcester. Would the community manager cognescenti consider a trip out to the hinterlands, I wonder.
  • Eric Modeen, a Product Manager who I've seen at several events over the course of almost a year. It's always great to see him.
  • Rama Nandiwada of IT Shore
  • Mark Rodman - I saw him fly by, past the Penmia table.
  • Rich Sands and I talked marketing. He recently handled a big announcement for his largest client, and he's pretty jazzed about that.
  • Tara Greco - I had last seen her months ago.
  • Masoud Shadravan who reports that his new job is interesting work and a he's on a terrific team. Excellent!
  • Christine Sierra - I saw her rush by; don't think she saw me. And,
  • Chuck Tanowitz - we got a chance to catch up on marketing ideas but also his grilled salmon with jasmine rice and roasted root vegetables. It sounded fantastic!

I think the best part for me -- other than reconnecting -- was seeing the Mass Challenge space itself. It's somewhat similar to our own office space. I guess we all start from the same point, more or less.
Here we all go.

Continue reading

Picture an Office

Posted in on September 27, 2010 No Comments

[caption id="attachment_1469" align="alignleft" width="224" caption="Alex's desk has been put in this very spot. I sit to his left and then Bob sits to my left. Kevin is to the right of Alex(his space is off-camera)."]The office at Neuron Robotics[/caption] We are (mostly) moved in.
See, it goes like this: it's an incubator space, close to WPI. So we have all manner of furniture in a space that provides lighting, power, HVAC and a lock on the door. And, that's about it.
And that's fine. It is, as they say, a start.
We have whiteboards. There is a big conference table. We have chairs that are decent, ergonomically speaking. And we have a soldering station and our stuff (screws, robotic arms, electrical tape and whatnot) is fairly well sorted. There is a coffee maker and a small fridge.
Little touches are appearing, like my Wegman calendar, and Bob's photographs. Plus there's Kevin's remote controlled helicopter.
Yes, we have a company helicopter. It can only transport a few amoebae (or a really small mouse), but we still have one. Kevin flew it around the office on Friday after we had put the furniture in, and it is a fun little toy. If you come over, and someone yells, "Duck!", well, now you know why they might be doing that.
At some point, we will have an Open House, when things are more together. But not only was it fun to get the stuff in and fairly well arranged, there was a while there where we were all sitting and working. I was typing a blog draft, Kevin was coding, Bob was looking at email and Alex was putting stuff into drawers (Greg is in Baltimore right now, but he was there in spirit). It felt, for lack of a better term, real.
We are getting there. And that is definitely a good half of the fun.
Just don't forget to duck on occasion.

Continue reading

Robotics and Ethics, Part VIII and Conclusion

Posted in Opinion on September 24, 2010 No Comments

There is another disturbing look into the future of the military's use of robotics. At the present time all current uses of robotics in the military assume the current policy of “man-in-loop” systems, where a soldier is on the other end of a system directly controlling it.
However, there is research and an initiative to have an autonomous fighting force by 2012. (Sparrow, R. (2007))
If this becomes the case, there comes a whole other level of moral responsibility that cannot be directly claimed by one person. This is a very dangerous situation where no human can be blamed if a robot participates in an atrocity. There is research to embed ethics into the autonomous systems so that they cannot knowingly commit war crimes, but ultimately those ethical models must be part of the system that governs the behavior of the robot. The only time that a robot could commit an atrocity (unless directly ordered to) would be if some part of its control system were to be damaged, or malfunctioning. If the ethical model meant to stop the robot from commuting atrocities is the same system running the robot, then there is no oversight of ethics on its behavior.
At the present time there are no autonomous systems in place capable of deciding to kill a human on their own. There are, however, projects such as the Talon project in the US and the Korean Armed Border Guard Robots that are being developed.
The Talon project is a US funded mobile autonomous gun platform that will be in a very real sense the type of robots feared by generations of science fiction writers. The Korean Border guard Robot is a stationary platform that will shoot and kill any person attempting to cross the 38th parallel. These types of projects show that a world where these ethical concerns must be considered is fast approaching. (Sharkey, N. (2008))
The politicians are the only ones that have the ability to effect policy on moral grounds. It is their job to temper the military's singleminded goal-oriented view of the world with reason and morals. Any lack of opposition on their part means that they have allowed other motives to corrupt their primary goal of representing the peoples will with an ethical decision making process.
There are some politicians who have objected to war on moral grounds, but the majority have not, and in fact have actively supported and even championed the war effort. There are monetary rewards for a technological war being waged and the most likely scenario is that this money has colored decisions. This leaves the politicians and their lack of action as the most morally culpable in the ongoing wars.
In the end, everyone in today’s modern society has participated in the ever-expanding world of technology and its cyclical interaction with its use in the military. The citizens sit back and watch their government and military, content with the comforts today’s technology has brought them. The military has used the technology available to them to hide the true nature of war and convince the citizenry to be content. The politicians have lost their ethical compass due to the lack of public outrage at immoral or unethical acts. All of these forces have worked together to create a society that cannot pull itself out of an ever deepening spiral towards an increasingly technological and increasingly deployed military.

Continue reading

Maker Faire

Posted in Announcements on August 13, 2010 No Comments

We have been invited to run a booth at Maker Faire! If you'll be in the Providence area on August 28th from 3-9pm, you'll want to come by. It's at the Bank of America Skating Center. Check out Maker Faire's main page in order to learn more.

Maker Faire

Maker Faire calls all builders, inventors, innovators, hackers, tinkerers, gadgeteers, designers, artists, fabricators, welders, craftspeople, fabric technologists, bricolaurs, engineers, scientists, garden wizards and more to come show off our creations! And we will be there with robots!

Location

The event will be held at the Bank of America Skating Center located at:
2 Kennedy Plaza
Providence, RI 02903

We recommend that you take the MBTA Commuter Rail or Amtrak to Providence's train station at 100 Gaspee Street and then take a cab or walk about a mile if possible. Street parking is available. Parking garages are also available at Providence Place Mall, the Convention Center, the Parkade and the Union Station Garage.

Public Transportation

On the T, take the Providence/Stoughton Commuter Rail Line to the Providence stop. Walk southwest on Gaspee Street. Take the first left toward Railroad Street. Turn right at Railroad Street. Take the first left to stay on Railroad Street. Continue onto Exchange Street. Turn left at Memorial Blvd. Turn right at Fulton Street. 2 Kennedy Plaza will be on the left .

Additionally, Amtrak stops in Providence.


View Larger Map

Live Blog

We will be blogging straight from the event, sometimes with video. Link to follow! Please use hashtag #NRMF if you wish to tweet about this event. Thanks, and we'll see you there!

Continue reading

Mass Innovation Night August 11, 2010

Posted in Events on August 13, 2010 No Comments

It was my pleasure to once again attend Mass Innovation Night. Of course I brought along business cards and a DyIO.
Mass Innovation Night (affectionately known as MassInno) showcases area startups and brings together supporters, job seekers, possible investors, experts and more. This month promised to have a new twist as food companies were showcased in a themed setting. Thanks, as always, to the Hostess with the Mostest, Bobbie Carlton. She is not only a friend of Neuron Robotics but I am proud to count her among my personal friends as well.
This was the Foodie Edition! There were a lot of goodies which I will get to in a bit. I did see Ben Hron of the VC Ready Law Group who, as he was passing by just had one thing to say: "Best. Mass. Inno. Ever." I'm not so sure I 100% agree and the reason will become readily apparent at the end of this blog entry. But it was definitely fun!
The presentations began with introductions to the experts, who were:

  • Dan Davis of Accounting Management Solutions; they provide significant financial consulting experience. Need a CFO? He can do that, too.
  • Rama Nandiwada of IT Shore; she works with companies to provide off-shore IT services.
  • Janet Morgenstern Passani of Jute Marketing specializes in consumer food and lifestyle brands.
  • Catherine Arnston of The Naughty Nutritionist is putting together a business to sell packets of spirulina and chlorella. These are algae that can help with certain forms of detoxification and,
  • Jessica Manganello of New Leaf Legal. This law firm represents a new paradigm in legal services - upfront flat rates and collaborative efforts. Their clients include Mass. Energy Lab, and Shadwell, a Boston-based band.

The presenters were:
  • KangoGift - founders Thad Peterson and Todd Horton have created a system whereby you can send instant gifts via cel phone. Unlike with games like Farmville, these are real things! For example, you can send someone a gift certificate to a restaurant. Then the recipient can redeem the certificate at that restaurant at their leisure. They had a promo code for the evening -- if you went to the Finale page on their website, and used the code MassInno rather than a credit card number when checking out, you could get a free cupcake! All that they ask is that you tweet about it.
  • Eversave - they provide daily deals on mainly restaurants and food-related merchandise although they are expanding to spas and the like. A lot of the deals are related to charity, e. g. 10% of last week's take went to Cystic Fibrosis charities. The company is hiring, and expanding into Philadelphia and Austin, Texas. They are running a contest - tweet about the event using the following two hashtags: #MassInno and #EversaveBOS and be entered to win a gift certificate. And be sure to follow them on Twitter; their account is @EversaveBOS.
  • TopSprouts - Alice Leung's dream is to provide local fresh produce for urban consumers on a year-'round basis. This will be accomplished via rooftop greenhouses. The goal is to minimize resource input and maximize yield. This will be from things like using the waste heat that is shedded from rooftops every day, and managing storm water. They are currently looking for beta testers and,
  • 1FastBite - Andrea Dacayanan described how her company is a restaurant ordering and management system. Essentially, they empower restaurants to compete online, via orders, social media connections and, soon, design freedom that will allow member restaurants to design their pages in order to match their overall branding visions. They work to help family-owned restaurants. She noted that 9.5% of all employment in Massachusetts is in restaurants. And they brought Waltham Pizza with them. Waltham Pizza brought pizza and Buffalo wings. Oh, the pizza went fast!

Additional represented companies were:
  • Batch Ice Cream - they make small batches of delectable ice creams. I tried their Cinnamon-Chocolate blend. I did not taste the chocolate too much, but the cinnamon flavor was delightfully complex and rich.
  • Boston Chocolate Tours - they provide tours of bakeries and chocolate makers around town and brought some lovely s'mores with them!
  • Catnip Cards - This amusing concept consists of the creating and mailing of handmade paper cards (the envelopes are made from recycled paper) that you can send to your cat. The cards are infused with catnip for the cat's enjoyment, and are printed with edible ink so you don't have to worry about Fluffy.
  • Cooking for Geeks - Author Jeff Potter brought luscious watermelon and a lovely (and very easy to make!) watermelon and feta salad. And be sure to look for his book on Amazon!
  • Lime Tree Cove - they make The Barmaid, which is a kind of cocktail rimming device. I saw it in action -- it's about the size of a couple of thick pens tied together and seems to be very easy to use and thorough in its application of salt or sweet mint (I picked the mint).
  • Mystery Meet - Boston-area foodies meet once per month to explore new restaurants. The restaurant is kept a mystery to add to the fun and,
  • Nom X3 - Jeff Cutler and Mike Langford go to different restaurants for lunch and tape themselves doing so. These videos end up on their site, as they rate restaurants and rant about anything and everything (climate control, sports, etc.). I hope Jeff liked the s'more I brought him.

I also saw:

I made new friends, including:

The next one is in September and we at Neuron Robotics are very excited about that one. Why? Oh, well, it's just that we are hoping to present there!
Will we make it? We will need your help and your votes. You, our terrific supporters, can help make it happen. Stay tuned.

Continue reading

Robotics and Ethics, Part VII

Posted in Opinion on August 9, 2010 No Comments

One theme that is a constant among the varied uses and effects of the use of technology is that the merits are always determined by the user. There is no technology that can be good or evil or even neutral. It is always a matter of the motives of use of the technology. Is it being used to help people or to hurt, to create or to destroy? The responsibility for the effect of a piece of technology is on the designer of its final intended use, and on those who use it. Ultimately no technology can be praised or blamed for anything, it will always be the user that deserves the acclaim or accusations.
The motive behind the increased use of technology on the part of the average citizen is the least complex. A citizen is looking for a few simple things, to live, be safe and happy and to have those close to them be safe and happy as well. The average citizen has utilized technology to keep in closer contact with friends and family and become better informed about the world.
The average citizen will claim to be just “wasting time” on the Internet when they are in fact consuming information and media. Their motivation is often benign, as they are curious. They seek information about the people they care about and when that is consumed, they seek more information. The information is often slanted one way or another, but to the average citizen this is of little consequence. Because they believe themselves to be more informed about the world and see no reason to rise up against their government, they act less than previous generations have. For their part in the military and political process, they are mostly inactive. If any blame can be assigned, it is a matter of apathy at worst.
The military has decided to incorporate technology into the modern fighting force for a number of reasons. They are assumed to have the primary goal of protecting the United States from foreign threats. To do this effectively they need an effective fighting force. In generations past, this used to mean more and more soldiers. The new paradigm is better and better equipped soldiers.
The military has made effective use of technology for the purpose of keeping soldiers out of harm’s way, and not having to replace them. This might seem a noble intention on the surface, but this is just a reaction to the difficulties of running a wartime draft. The real motivation is that replacing soldiers is actually getting more and more difficult; therefore, it becomes important to protect the soldiers that you have. From less than noble intentions comes a positive result. The military comes out looking better than their intentions merit. Their moral culpability for the negative effects of technology comes from their myopic view of the world. They fail to see, or fail to care about the further reaching effects of their policies.
Next: the future, and the conclusion

Continue reading

Review of our TEDxBoston pre-adventure

Posted in Events on July 30, 2010 1 Comments

[caption id="attachment_1028" align="alignright" width="207" caption="Neuron Robotics Team plus our hostesses."]TEDxBoston July 27, 2010[/caption] On July 27, 2010, we had the great pleasure and privilege to host a pre-adventure for TEDxBoston.
We knew that this was an extraordinary opportunity -- particularly for a tiny startup such as we are, and were prepared to make the most of it.
It all actually began a few weeks beforehand. TEDxBoston had approached iRobot to present, but they were unable to do so. Dr. Kristen Stubbs of iRobot was kind enough to suggest that we present instead. We were so impressed by iRobot's generosity that we decided to use iRobot Creates as the bases for some of our demonstrations. We highly recommend the Create, and would love to work with iRobot again. We feel that our relationship with them is a symbiotic one, and we would love to see it grow.
The ideas began to flow, and soon we had the concepts down for five solid demonstrations that would showcase not only our vision for the future but also, naturally, show off the DyIO to its fullest advantage, as it is now available for preorders.
The first idea was for a basic board which showed what happens as various channels are changed. Guests would be able to press a button or turn a dial by selecting an icon or sliding a bar on a computer screen.
The second demonstration would be to show what many think of as being standard industrial robotic behaviors. A small arm would be placed in front of a little conveyor belt and the arm would then grab an item off the belt as it went by. But what to place atop the belt? Bob (our President) found a small soft foam stress cube, so we used that, and affectionately nicknamed it "The Marshmallow". A quick idea to use real marshmallows was vetoed as the conveyor belt could not be made food grade sanitary in time for the event.
The next demonstration would be using a Wiimote to drive a small robot perched atop an iRobot Create. The remote would control the robot in the same manner that a Wiimote may be used to control a Wii, thereby permitting it to be driven around a tabletop.
The fourth demonstration would showcase home automation. A blueprint was created by professional AutoCADD Designer/Drafter Jay Siegel. This was needed in order to represent a standard home floor plan. Lights were placed beneath the drawing onto a foam backing board and then hooked up to the DyIO. In addition, three larger, regular lamps (the "tall lamp", the "normal lamp" and the "ugly lamp" -- these were lamps that could be found in any home) were connected. A user would then be able to turn either type of light on and off by clicking computer icons, and see the results both on the drawing and on the physical lamps themselves.
The fifth and final demonstration would be the pièce de résistance, the TwitterBot. TwitterBot had two functions: one was to draw using a marking pen and the other was to move (this was another demonstration built using an iRobot Create as its base). Both functions were performed in response to commands tweeted to the robot on its own accounts, @NRDemoBot and @NRDemoBot2. Guests would be able to get hands on with the demonstrations and use Twitter to pass commands to TwitterBot.
We arrived early and began setting up. We were thrilled to have Ms. Paula Rudy and Ms. Galia Traub with us. We could not have done this without them. We also received a tweet from Bobbie Carlton of Mass Innovation Nights. She was in the area -- could she help in any way? Her gracious offer was gratefully accepted and, when she arrived, she was wonderful at our front desk and helped a good 40 - 60 people sign in. Her help was most welcome.
Our guests mingled and enjoyed pizza. They included:


Then it was time to get down to it. Mr. Tellefsen opened with a few remarks about Microsoft and the beautiful meeting space we were excited to borrow for the evening. Then Greg gave his talk on The Future of Robotics. Our main aim is in the area of interoperability. Devices should have the ability to work together without too much deep diving into coding. Our vision is for more and more people to be able to create and design robots, and use them practically, in their homes and offices. How can more people get into this exciting field? The goal is to help kick down some of the barriers to entry.
After the talk, guests came around to see and play with the demonstrations. Like there always is with hardware, there were some issues. We are thrilled to take those as learning experiences. It is our desire to continually improve.
Our website is open for preorders of the DyIO, and our plans are to ship in early October of 2010. By then, TEDxBoston 2010 will be remote in time, but it will still be in the forefront of our memories.
On behalf of Alex, Greg, Kevin and Bob, I would like to thank John Werner and Grier Tumas of Citizen Schools (they got us set up with TEDxBoston), Gina Bettis, Dr. Gregory Fischer, Bobbie Carlton, Marlin May, Dr. Kristen Stubbs of iRobot, Tore Tellefsen and Leah Brunson of Microsoft, Galia Traub, Paula Rudy, Jay Siegel and all of you, our faithful readers and supporters, for making it such a spectacular day.
Our next planned event will be Maker Faire in Providence, Rhode Island, late next month.
I don't know what the future will bring, but I can tell you one thing: you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Continue reading

Beyond Robotics Video Posted

Posted in Events on July 30, 2010 No Comments

If you weren't able to attend our event or just want to relive the talk that Greg gave, check out the video of his talk.

Continue reading

© 2010 Copyright Neuron Robotics, LLC. All Rights Reserved.