Week 9 (July 24 - July 30)

With two weeks remaining, We decided to make improvements to our Virtual Waiting Service to create the best product possible. Also, if there is enough time, I will also try to do as much as possible on the ScratchROS interface, but the main priority is the Hack-a-Thon part 2. For this, we wanted to make improvements on the hardware for our waiter robot to make it a little taller and lighter. I also improved the internet site we used to make it look more professional. I added a web template to add color and organization to the site. I also found out how to secure a webpage with a password, which I added to the driver's page so that only we could control the robot. Before, anybody who was on the site would have been able to control the robot if everything was up and running. We also added a page with our contact information and a page for pictures and videos of the project. The new and improved site can be seen here. We also wanted to do an official demonstration, so we got permission from a coffee shop to have our robot deliver drinks in their establishment. We also wanted to add a map made from a Neato robot with a laser to have a map of the vicinity for the teleoperator to have a good idea of where to drive, but we would not have enough time to accomplish this.

Besides this, We were able to do a little more sight-seeing in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley Area. On Tuesday, we were able to visit Google global headquarters in Mountain View, CA and take a very brief tour of their huge campus. On Thursday, we we visited Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) in San Francisco, a very popular division of Lucasfilm Ltd that specializes in special effects. They have provided visual effects for a giant collection of movies. These movies include films by George Lucas (Star Wars series), a vast majority of Steven Spielberg films (Indiana Jones series, E.T., Jurassic Park, etc.), as well as more recent movies including Iron 2, Transformers 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 4, and Harry Potter 7.2 this summer. We were able to see a special demo in the Motion Capture lab and there were many other cool movie memorabilia and objects in the facility but we were not allowed to take pictures outside of the lobby area. And finally, on Friday we visited the Electronic Arts (EA) global headquarters in Redwood Shores, CA, which I was very excited about because after I graduate I would like to work in the video game industry and design video games, preferably EA Sports in Orlando. EA is one of the most popular gaming companies in the world and they make a variety of video games for consumers to play. I could also see myself going into animation or 3D visual effects, working at a place like ILM. We were also able to go to Six Flags Discovery Kingom in Vallejo, CA on Saturday.

San Francisco, CA