Jan 12 2006
LinuxDevices.com has a posting about a newly launched website by one of its members that combines two of my favorite things: Linux and robots. The website, LinuxRobots.org, was created by Michael Shiloh, an electrical engineer, Linux buff, and robot builder for Survival Research Laboratories (SRL), the performance art group whose spectacularly noisy and destructive robot …
Jan 11 2006
The first major overhaul of the General Public License (GPL) in almost 15 years is set to be released to the public by the Free Software Foundation at the First International Conference on GPLv3 at MIT on January 16th. Monday’s draft, which will begin the public debate about the wording of version 3, is just …
Dec 04 2005
I must admit that I am having a hard time keeping up with all of the reports coming out of IREX. Even though I am falling behind, there are still a handful of robots in my backlog that I feel are worthy of mention, the first being the HOAP-3. Fujitsu has been developing the HOAP …
Nov 29 2005
Popular Science has an article today about the Kegbot, a keg fridge crossed with a Linux computer. Developed by software engineer Mike Wakerly, the system is built around a microcontroller that manages a valve and flowmeter that’s been integrated into the tap line of an ordinary keg fridge. The controller is interfaced to a Linux …
Oct 29 2005
After some delays forced by last minute bug reports, kernel 2.6.14 has been released. Linus Torvalds said in September when he first froze the code for 2.6.14 that there were changes “all over the place,” and that is definitely the case. LinuxDevices.com has a good summary, and the announcement from Linus himself is available at …
Oct 22 2005
DeLaval, a 122 year old dairy equipment company, offers the Voluntary Milking System (VMS), an embedded Linux-controlled, robotic cow-milking system. What sets this system apart is that the process is entirely automated, and the cows themselves decide when they are ready to be milked. The VMS stands to revolutionize dairy farming as it is able …
Oct 02 2005
Nicholoas Negroponte, chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, spoke recently at their annual Emerging Technologies Conference confirming that MIT is planning to provide low cost computers to underprivileged children in developing countries globally as well as to students here in the U.S. The One Laptop per Child nonprofit group is the offshoot …
