Neato Burrito - Cool stuff on the net
This is what I'm going to call cool and interesting finds on the net - Neato Burrito. What do you think?First up is the DARPA Open Source Catalog: http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/4/5377492/darpa-publishes-all-its-open-source-code-in-one-place-open-catalog DARPA the Defense Advances Research Project Agency for the United States Military has often had many of its projects in an open source domain. After all, these are tax payer funded efforts and if they are not deemed a national security risk to share, then they should be open. But to obtain the information you had to track it down yourself and usually ask for the information. I've done that myself when I requested documentation on the "Manny" humanoid robot from the 1980's and had to place a phone call to a military base and to my surprise I was promptly sent a large envelope with all sorts of neat info on the robot.
In an effort to modern the openness of some of their projects DARPA very smartly started their Open Catalog: http://www.darpa.mil/OpenCatalog/index.html Check it our for yourself.
Next is this awesome 42 minute presentation on robotics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcyKOSECgtk On the Applications of Python in Robotics - by, Lentin Joseph. It gives and overview of how Python can be used on a Raspberry Pi computer for color tracking and send control signals to an arduino microcontroller for motor control signals to steer a robot.
