Shira is focused on three large themes presently: robotics, re-thinking traditional education, and a project to create a graphic novel in a 2D style but using 3D CGI techniques. “For the first one, I’ve created MOARbots. For the second one, I teach for two months over the summer at intensive academic camp programs for middle and high school students. For the third one, I’ve been learning Blender(a free and open source 3D animation suite.).” says Shira. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California in 2012 she attended graduate school for a year before deciding it wasn’t for her at the time. “I came to Sector67 and decided that now is the time for me to work on all the projects I put on the back burner while I was in school.” One of those projects being MOARbots (Modular Open-Source Affordable Robots ). “MOARbots is about providing resources to people who want to build a bunch of robots on a budget. Typically costing under $50 with some designs costing much less.”
MOARbots are designed to be made with 3d printed plastic, along with easy to source parts, such as nails, rubber bands, marbles, hot glue, and heat shrink. MOARbots feature a wireless radio, so that robots can be used in a variety of ways such as: overhead camera based autonomous navigation, distributed multi agent systems, or remote control. “The main application this framework is designed to work for is a situation where you want to run experiments with multiple robots that get data wirelessly about their position from an overhead camera using vision tracking algorithms. This means instead of focusing on the robots doing processing on raw data, which requires computational resources, additional sensors, and time, you can get started right away doing higher level stuff, like making the robots play tag.”
“What makes MOARbots possible is rapid prototyping, and that is what makes Sector67 so integral to this project. Most of the parts for the robots are 3D printed and others are laser cut, all using the tools at Sector67. I also got a lot of suggestions and answers to my questions from Chris Meyer and Sector67 members. There are also lots of tools and parts I didn’t realize I needed until the middle of the project, and Sector67 provides me with immediate access to these things”
Shira has been a Sector67 member since January 2014
For more information about MOARbots or info on building your own visit https://sites.google.com/site/moarbots/
To keep up with all of Shiras amazing projects follow her blog: http://buildingfriends.blogspot.com
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