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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Bus Stop Robots


The last couple weeks have been very difficult ... almost surreal. It's hard to focus and thoughts are bouncing around constantly between sadness.

One thing that I'm learning is it's important to get up off the couch and stay busy. Sitting around drags you down into a very dark place. So I felt it was important to get back into building in some form. Building R2 is something I'm going to put on the back burner for about 3 months. That takes more concentration that I'm able to give at this stage.

So my new project will be an easy scratch building project of something that I've been thinking about for awhile. The Bus Stop Robots. I first saw a picture of these robots in an old 50's or 60's SciFi magazine and a big light bulb turned on in my head. So last weekend I started my Bus Stop Robots and have been making fairly decent progress. The torso's are complete and the motors and mounts are complete for the shoulder areas.

These will be animated robots and will sit on my (covered) front porch with the bus stop sign next to them. Ultrasonic sensors in them will detect when somebody is walking up the walk toward the front door. Once that happens, the male robot will turn his head to look toward the person coming up the walk. Then the female robot will turn her head and they will look at the person and then turn and look at each other. Maybe I'll turn lights on in their eyes too. I'm sure it will freak out the UPS delivery person and the two nice lady Jehovahs witness's that come by every so often.

Paul loved to tease me about our robot infested house even though I'm sure he enjoyed the robots as much as us. I can certainly guess what his funny comments would have been about this project.

A new friend of mine also said he is going to build some bus stop robots. However his are going to be made of metal and sit in his yard and rust. That will look cool. Rusted robots waiting for a bus that never came ...

ALSO ..... I am in the long tedius process of converting my blog over to this new blog server. I have to manually convert all the old entries and upload all the pictures so older entries and pictures will eventually be there but it may take awhile.

2 comments:

Karma said...

That bus stop robot idea sounds fantastic. Way to go, getting up and goign for it. It was a smart decision to put aside another project when you don't feel you have the ability to do it at the moment. It shows how much you truly care about your work. When you're good and ready, that's when you'll do what's right for you.

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Elizabeth said...

Hi there.. stumbled upon your blog while blog hopping. I'm so sorry about your son. I hope that you find some peace and solace with your new project.