We are inviting test users to the ihands site: http://ihands.rwu.edu

Right now we are in very preliminary testing. This means it will only be online when we are in the room, weekday afternoons (US Eastern) starting June 12th.

We have built a pair of mecahnical hands for Internet operation and will let users model clay with these hands. Right now we are letting users manipulate balloons, and of course they are fun to pop.

We also invite your feedback. We are very, very early in this project and many aspects are still under development.

PumaPaint has a new, more reliabe gripper and a higher quality arm-mounted camera. It's still operational as close to 24x7 that I can get it.

I have added a new and (hopefully) interesting camera to PumaPaint. I have alwaysh thought it would be interesting to see the robot move from a little farther off, so you can see it handle the brushes, dip etc. I have added a new USB camera to the site, just for fun. This view is too far off to really help you paint, but you can watch the robot go about creating your painting.

Also, it's a new camera and it's a little rough. Right now the update rate is a little slow and the USB communicaiton seems to hang every so often.

Thanks to the article on this site, the PumaPaint has seen a manyfold increase in activity lately. One readily apparent problem is that only one user can be painting at a time, so this site can be swamped easily.

Any number of users can watch the action by starting up the camera applet, but it only accepts one connection at a time. I have a student working on improving traffic management. Right now it is very poor, you can connect and the interface will say you are connected, but you are not really in control. What is happening is that your commands are being queued in the socket, and this is a pretty stupid feature.

I have put the PumaPaint project back on line after a two- year absence while I moved it to Roger Williams University. This is a fairly well known online robot that allows users to paint pictures using a PUMA robot. Anyone interested can get their painting in the mail free of charge. To try it, go to: http://pumapaint.rwu.edu