Weeks from May until 8/7/09 were occupied with:

• Reading about my post-doc's prior research and the forerunner to this project - Rosie
• Learning about our goals and purposes for RosieII?
• Brainstorming ways in which to implement what we want, both in prototype and final stages
• Researching off-the-shelf robot arms for our rough prototype and presenting to team
• Brainstorming configurations of iMac plus arm
• Brainstorming and attempting several methods of motorizing an iMac including:
  • Direct drive on rollerblade wheel
  • Wire wrapped around motor shaft
  • Cable around worm on motor shaft
• Speccing out torques needed to move iMac and final neck head
• Researching cost of Maxon motor/gearhead/encoders and presenting to team
• Designing and CAD of motor mount brackets, rollerblade wheel mounts, and cable support assemblies for iMac
• Using the HAAS to make above pieces
• Brainstorming and prototyping how many degrees of freedom needed in final version of arm and neck
• Building and installing off-the-shelf robot arm and accompanying software
• Rigging off-the-shelf robot arm to be run through RC airplane controller
• Determining form of packets sent of off-the-shelf robot arm over serial
• Programming motions for off-the-shelf robot arm
• Programming an applet to command off-the-shelf robot arm through interface of buttons
• Discussing with team the best way for user to control final versions of arm and neck

Week of 8/10:

• Used HAAS to make cable support assemblies for latest attempt to motorize iMac
• Researched and found worm gears that can be used to increase friction between our cable and motor
• Created a .dxf file for rough prototype shoulder assembly
• LaserCAMMed? shoulder assembly
• Presented my work so far to other SURIs at a lunch meeting
• Attempted to salvage either the parts or mold (or both) from a bad batch of Task3 that didn't cure
• More iMac puppeting videos
• Broke up video files into clips for survey

Week of 8/17:

• Remade mold for iMac flywheel parts, including a redesign that allowed for tensioning of cables
• Poured Task9 with some black dye
• Realized that the pouring took too long because bubbles hardened during the gassing process
• Re-remade mold and repoured with less black dye (to maintain transparency). This time we used Jamba Juice cups and timed it well.
• We still got a few bubbles in the parts, which were probably from the wax block degassing.

Week of 8/24:

• Attached all parts to iMac, including stringing cables
• Working til 2:30am trying to debug problems before the ICED workshop, but didn't get it working