Daniel Benamy Dedicated Project Visit Application
Contents
Basic Info
I'm Dan Benamy from NY, USA.
Video of Interest
Sample Work
Jackbot
A robotic road following car that drives itself.
- Main control software, including simple vision algorithm, written in Python.
- One microcontroller was a Basic Stamp with software written in PBASIC.
- The second microcontroller was a custom board based on an Atmel AVR with software written in C. I designed the PCB using Eagle, fabricated it with a friend, and soldered on the parts myself.
You can get an overview at https://www.assembla.com/spaces/jackbot/wiki/Home and there's some design documentation in the wiki pages linked from that page (nav bar on the left).
Hand Made Log Cabin
I'm not quite done building a very rustic log cabin, almost entirely with hand tools.
PR2 Sushi
Making the PR2 robot set a table and clean up.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnfJUPz6__M
I wrote some pretty neat python, mostly high level control logic and integration, but I'm not sure where it is.
Turtle feeder
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOg0jZJhZNU
It uses an Arduino and some motors I had lying around. It's quick and dirty, but gets the job done.
Hardware accelerated ray tracer using an FPGA
Project home page: https://www.assembla.com/wiki/show/hwraytracer
This was a cool project with decent documentation although I didn't love some of the documentation that my teammates wrote.
Skills and Expertise I Hope to Gain
I'd love to learn any or all of:
- Economics and theory of society that OSE hopes to enable to give people more free time and more freedom.
- Machining parts (eg cutting, welding, etc).
- More assorted construction skills.
- General engineering processes and skills, like making detailed designs.
- Maybe about meta-engineering (how you're designing processes to run the project smoothly and scale).
Work and Volunteer Experience
- Software Developer at Red Hat
- Sysadmin at Columbia University
- Teaching Assistant at Columbia University
- Web Developer at NY Public Radio
- Guest robotics teacher for elementary school
- Web & Messaging Developer at Mobile Commons
- Visiting Robotic Developer at Willow Garage
Availability
The wiki says many DPV are a month, and that works for me. I was thinking that October would be a good time. I'm somewhat flexible on scheduling though.
I'm Kosher
- I'm over 18.
- I'm willing to publish all the results of my work openly according to the OSE Open IP Guidelines.
- I have the resources to support myself while volunteering.
Source
I don't remember how I first heard about OSE. Maybe Marcin's TED talk.