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Introductions
Matt Patterson - Machine Vision Sales - KEYENCE
MATT PATTERSON < mpatterson@keyence.com > , Sales Associate for KEYENCE's Machine Vision Products, stopped by AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC's workshop yesterday to see Automatic Guided Vehicle WENDY DARLING. We are looking to see which of their 125 vision systems and vision system parts would be useful in saving lives. Matt has been with the company for about 8 months now and loves to golf so his monthly visits to his industrial accounts in Traverse City should be a lot of fun for him with the large number of golf courses there are in the area. He is out of the Grand Rapids office and considering the miles he puts in covering all of Michigan, I would say he is a good candidate for the consumer version of our automatic guided vehicle system. There are a lot of people out there, like Matt, who need an AIM AutoPilot for their long haul car or truck trips.
Doug - AIM Team Member, former GM Research Engineer. At GM Doug was in charge of testing the experimental stuff and now lives in Traverse City on the other side of town from the shop. He works several hours a week and travels by bicycle. Being that close to the road and in touch with how much power it takes to cover the 13 miles to the shops secret location has given him a new appreciation for energy conservation and fuel efficiency. He may become part of AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC's electric car work once the US Army driverless system design is completed and demonstrated.
Linda - AIM Team member - Technical Librarian.
Linda - AIM Team member - Technical Librarian. This is a view of bay #3 of the AIM shops. The first 12 people to show up on the second Saturday of each month at 1 pm get doughnuts. Everyone gets hot chocolate on the cold northern Michigan afternoons. Life size print of Honda's P-3 is in the background. Five copies of it were printed for us by Britten Media from a slide sent to us by Honda's Public Relations Department. At the printing plant they blew up the slide on the art computers and you could see the works in the helmet through the faceplate. Linda leads the Friday night work group made up mostly of teenagers working for the resume bullet point and community service points.
Mary - AIM Team Member, Support Staff; Sandi - AIM Team Member, Grant Writer; Andy - ROBOT CLUB Guest Speaker - Wood Gasification.
Mary - AIM Team Member, Support Staff; Sandi - AIM Team Member, Grant Writer; Andy - ROBOT CLUB Guest Speaker - Wood Gasification. This is part of bay #3 of the AIM shops. AGV WENDY DARLING is being assembled in bay #6, bay #7 is reserved for grounds maintenance equipment. The two unnumbered bays (without roll up doors) are the technical library and an unheated storage area reached through bay #1.
Gene - Long time AIM Team member
Gene - Long time AIM Team member, Electronics Wizard, did the soldering in the GPS satellites orbiting the earth. Here he is reviewing the plans for the automatic controls he has been asked to build to automate six wood gasifier that will generate electrical power. In the background are bays #3 and #4 of the AIM shop. The items on the shelves are things donated for the driverless truck project.
Josh - AIM Team Member, Support Staff
Josh - AIM Team Member, Support Staff - using a CAD program to map out the AIM building and assign locations for donated tools, parts, and materials in 3D space. An electronic sketch pad is to his left. A place for everything and everything in its place is the only way to keep track of the thousands of parts and materials that have been donated. With everyone being a volunteer and here for only short periods of time each week, it is essential that their time here be put to efficient use working rather than searching for what they need. We use a coordinate system that consists of one foot cubes. First number is how far they are from the west wall, then how far they are from the south wall and finally how far they are from the floor. This identifies a cubic foot of shop space - hopefully if you are that close you can find what you are looking for in that one cubic foot. To aid in navigation the intermediate walls are numbered as reference point. Other navigation or position points are also marked. Finally you can find the location using a tape measure. Recent advances in the use of RFID tags looks promising but for the moment we are low tech.
IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE AN DoD R&D LAB
Well, that is kind of the whole point. AIM is different, on purpose. There are pleanty of labs around the country that do it the same old way and they get some results. AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, on the other hand is an experiment to see what can be acomplished outside of the system. DoD is curious to see what happens when we try to do more with less.
CATALOGING WHAT WE HAVE
THANK YOU
FIGHT TERRORISTS IN YOUR SPARE TIME
Here at AIM I have arranged work, the way shopping is arranged in a mall. Malls are for drop in shopping, AIM is for drop in working, and of all things - Defense work. You can guage how serious you are about defending yourself, your family and the USA compared to how dedicated our sworn enemies are to killing us and put in what ever time you think is right. We are working on what the DoD has asked us to work on, in a rather unsusal way. The vitally important work is broken up into seemingly insignificant small chunks so that individual tasks are unclassified. The combined results on the otherhand are a secret. Some tasks are as simple as looking up a phone number or making a phone call. Would you be willing to do that to defend the USA? If you want to try your hand at doing this important life saving work, contact me.
GO ROBOTS !
Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
AIM: http://aimagic.org
Robot Club: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
CE Magazine: http://www.controleng.com/blog/1180000318.html
Introductions
April 18, 2008
Matt Patterson - Machine Vision Sales - KEYENCE
MATT PATTERSON < mpatterson@keyence.com > , Sales Associate for KEYENCE's Machine Vision Products, stopped by AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC's workshop yesterday to see Automatic Guided Vehicle WENDY DARLING. We are looking to see which of their 125 vision systems and vision system parts would be useful in saving lives. Matt has been with the company for about 8 months now and loves to golf so his monthly visits to his industrial accounts in Traverse City should be a lot of fun for him with the large number of golf courses there are in the area. He is out of the Grand Rapids office and considering the miles he puts in covering all of Michigan, I would say he is a good candidate for the consumer version of our automatic guided vehicle system. There are a lot of people out there, like Matt, who need an AIM AutoPilot for their long haul car or truck trips.
Doug - AIM Team Member, former GM Research Engineer. At GM Doug was in charge of testing the experimental stuff and now lives in Traverse City on the other side of town from the shop. He works several hours a week and travels by bicycle. Being that close to the road and in touch with how much power it takes to cover the 13 miles to the shops secret location has given him a new appreciation for energy conservation and fuel efficiency. He may become part of AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC's electric car work once the US Army driverless system design is completed and demonstrated.
Linda - AIM Team member - Technical Librarian.
Linda - AIM Team member - Technical Librarian. This is a view of bay #3 of the AIM shops. The first 12 people to show up on the second Saturday of each month at 1 pm get doughnuts. Everyone gets hot chocolate on the cold northern Michigan afternoons. Life size print of Honda's P-3 is in the background. Five copies of it were printed for us by Britten Media from a slide sent to us by Honda's Public Relations Department. At the printing plant they blew up the slide on the art computers and you could see the works in the helmet through the faceplate. Linda leads the Friday night work group made up mostly of teenagers working for the resume bullet point and community service points.
Mary - AIM Team Member, Support Staff; Sandi - AIM Team Member, Grant Writer; Andy - ROBOT CLUB Guest Speaker - Wood Gasification.
Mary - AIM Team Member, Support Staff; Sandi - AIM Team Member, Grant Writer; Andy - ROBOT CLUB Guest Speaker - Wood Gasification. This is part of bay #3 of the AIM shops. AGV WENDY DARLING is being assembled in bay #6, bay #7 is reserved for grounds maintenance equipment. The two unnumbered bays (without roll up doors) are the technical library and an unheated storage area reached through bay #1.
Gene - Long time AIM Team member
Gene - Long time AIM Team member, Electronics Wizard, did the soldering in the GPS satellites orbiting the earth. Here he is reviewing the plans for the automatic controls he has been asked to build to automate six wood gasifier that will generate electrical power. In the background are bays #3 and #4 of the AIM shop. The items on the shelves are things donated for the driverless truck project.
Josh - AIM Team Member, Support Staff
Josh - AIM Team Member, Support Staff - using a CAD program to map out the AIM building and assign locations for donated tools, parts, and materials in 3D space. An electronic sketch pad is to his left. A place for everything and everything in its place is the only way to keep track of the thousands of parts and materials that have been donated. With everyone being a volunteer and here for only short periods of time each week, it is essential that their time here be put to efficient use working rather than searching for what they need. We use a coordinate system that consists of one foot cubes. First number is how far they are from the west wall, then how far they are from the south wall and finally how far they are from the floor. This identifies a cubic foot of shop space - hopefully if you are that close you can find what you are looking for in that one cubic foot. To aid in navigation the intermediate walls are numbered as reference point. Other navigation or position points are also marked. Finally you can find the location using a tape measure. Recent advances in the use of RFID tags looks promising but for the moment we are low tech.
IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE AN DoD R&D LAB
Well, that is kind of the whole point. AIM is different, on purpose. There are pleanty of labs around the country that do it the same old way and they get some results. AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, on the other hand is an experiment to see what can be acomplished outside of the system. DoD is curious to see what happens when we try to do more with less.
AIM UPDATE
Last night I unsealed the roll up door on bay #6 where AGV WENDY DARLING is and sunshine for the first time this season poured in. It was startling how yellow the sunshine looked after having lit the bay all winter with cool white fluorescent bulbs. I have all the sensors and computers removed from AGV WENDY DARLING to protect them from the welding and painting that I am doing. Later today I am planning to do an engine test and run up to try out the new hotter ignition system etc. If you would like to get involved in this or other tasks, contact me.
KEEPING SCORE
Years ago, when during brewing crisis Congress asked the USAF how many planes they could put in the air that day, the USAF reported the 10% were ready to go. Needless to say the guy in charge of the USAF was replaced and the new guy changed how the USAF kept score. No longer would perks be determined by how many planes a commander "owned" but rather by how many sortees had been flow by his wing. Now it is possible for a commander who has only a few planes that fly all the time to rise in the pecking order higher than a commander who has many planes that can't fly. Profound changes were caused to happen in the USAF and readiness improved, simply by changing how the score was kept.
I am also changing the way we are keeping score here at AIM, up until now shares were based in the amount of time put in and was not directly tied to producing results. I am changing the scoring system to tasks completed. Each task will be assigned a point value based on estimated time to complete the task (flat rate book). This will encourage people new to the work environment to build good work habits. This is going to be a bit more work load on the administrative side and result in overall less lost time. "Work has a tendency to fill the time allotted"
Years ago, when during brewing crisis Congress asked the USAF how many planes they could put in the air that day, the USAF reported the 10% were ready to go. Needless to say the guy in charge of the USAF was replaced and the new guy changed how the USAF kept score. No longer would perks be determined by how many planes a commander "owned" but rather by how many sortees had been flow by his wing. Now it is possible for a commander who has only a few planes that fly all the time to rise in the pecking order higher than a commander who has many planes that can't fly. Profound changes were caused to happen in the USAF and readiness improved, simply by changing how the score was kept.
I am also changing the way we are keeping score here at AIM, up until now shares were based in the amount of time put in and was not directly tied to producing results. I am changing the scoring system to tasks completed. Each task will be assigned a point value based on estimated time to complete the task (flat rate book). This will encourage people new to the work environment to build good work habits. This is going to be a bit more work load on the administrative side and result in overall less lost time. "Work has a tendency to fill the time allotted"
CATALOGING WHAT WE HAVE
We are starting on our 2008 inventory of the shop and what people have donated to the automatic guided truck project. Anyone who wants to help count and catalog what we have in stock is welcome to earn shares doing this simple but essential task. Scores are based on items recorded for the count. Josh has worked out the coordinate system to identify the location of each item in the building and an ID marking system for the items. Sign up to put in two hours a week or more and I will show you how it works.
THANK YOU
This evening thank you letters were presented to the Friday Night crew that were present. For the adults in the crowd there were some tears being fought back, for the high school kids this is a letter of recomendation that they can bank for later. I know as an employer I would consider anyone who has worked on a Department of Defense project ahead of anyone who had one of the more common highschool summer jobs.
FIGHT TERRORISTS IN YOUR SPARE TIME
Here at AIM I have arranged work, the way shopping is arranged in a mall. Malls are for drop in shopping, AIM is for drop in working, and of all things - Defense work. You can guage how serious you are about defending yourself, your family and the USA compared to how dedicated our sworn enemies are to killing us and put in what ever time you think is right. We are working on what the DoD has asked us to work on, in a rather unsusal way. The vitally important work is broken up into seemingly insignificant small chunks so that individual tasks are unclassified. The combined results on the otherhand are a secret. Some tasks are as simple as looking up a phone number or making a phone call. Would you be willing to do that to defend the USA? If you want to try your hand at doing this important life saving work, contact me.
GO ROBOTS !
Paul F. Grayson - Chief Engineer
AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL MAGIC, LLC
Racing to build technology that saves soldier's lives.
390 4-Mile Rd. S.
Traverse City, MI 49686-8411
(231) 946-0187, (231) 883-4463 Cell
pgrayson@aimagic.org
AIM: http://aimagic.org
Robot Club: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/robotcluboftraversecitymi/
CE Magazine: http://www.controleng.com/blog/1180000318.html
Posted by Paul Grayson on April 18, 2008 | Comments (0)
Industries: Machine Control
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