Friday, May 14, 2010

My Robotics class started last night. I am going to love this class. It is all hands on. I have the same teacher for the majority of my classes. Normally, he just reads the book or a powerpoint presentation to us and it is very boring. But, not tonight. He handed out the syllabus told us to Read Chapter One and then gave us handouts on the Robot we are going to be programing. The Robot isn't the latest and greatest but it will suffice for general purposes.

After class was dismissed and the spoiled generation left, three of us older folks ganged up on the teacher and begged him to let us write a quick program. The instigator of this expedition is a guy that was in one of my previous classes. I love being around him. He has such enthusiasm and it just spreads to everyone in his vicinity. My good fortune is he is already a computer programmer. I will have a great advantage having him as my lab partner. Always, he is very encouraging. I guess that comes from being a father of six. The man has patience. Anyway, he I and one other older guy set up the Robotic arm, created a position table and then wrote the code to operate it. We just did a three position move but it was exciting. We had a near miss on the first go around. Our position offset was too low and we barely missed taking out the conveyor belt. We all gasped and laughed. We edited the program and all went well the second go around.

I will look forward to Thursdays for the next 11 weeks.