Come join the SWARMies. No really, it’s just a mailing list to keep you up-to-date with SWARM performances and parties.
Sign up here: http://orbswarm.com/swarmies.php

A little too early to confirm, but there are rumors of a serendipitous SWARM at the Flaming Lotus Girls fundraiser. Should be a great time for a good cause, so see you there!

We created and submitted a video for the VIDA 10.0 international competition.

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VIDA 10.0 is an international competition created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the fields of Artificial Life and related disciplines, such as robotics and Artiftcial Intelligence.We are looking for artistic projects that address the interaction between “synthetic” and “organic” life”.

In previous years prizes have been awarded to artistic projects using autonomous robots, avatars, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, cellular automata, computer viruses, virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation, and works that highlight the social side of Artificial Life.

The video is available on Youtube as well. http://youtube.com/watch?v=pZpcGwWfRBE

A high quality version can be downloaded here (mpeg4, 1kbps, 74megabytes)

A (0.5 gb) DVD quality version of this video is also available for the asking.

I linked them back to the Flickr pages from whence they came… go there to see more

So we’re all set to give a short presentation at Ignite SF on Tuesday 10/16 at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco. It looks like it will be something like Dorkbot on meth: presenters are limited to 5 minute talks and 15 seconds per slide. As you might expect of something organized by O’Reilly, a lot of the cool kids will be there. Come and join them, oh and us too!

Details here.

A lot of folks managed to miss SWARM out on the playa. (We understand — it’s not like there wasn’t anything else to distract you.) If that’s the case, or even if it wasn’t, here’s a chance to get up close and personal with our spheres at their first public appearance in the Bay Area.

We’ll be at the 8th annual SF Decompression HEAT THE STREET FaIRE. Some of our intrepid pedalheads will be riding the Mothership all the way from Hunter’s Point and back so respect! to them.

We don’t have our exact placement yet, but we’ll let you know as soon as we do. Come out and decompress!

Details: Sunday, October 7, 2007
Noon SHARP till 12 am
Public Entrance: 19th & Minnesota
(On Indiana Street between Mariposa and 22nd, SF)
$10 donation in Black Rock Couture/Costume; $20 in streetwear
All ages outdoors; kids under 12 are free!

The fine folks from current.tv spent a lot of time with us, both before the desert and on the playa. They took some great footage — watch a 3-minute version here:

http://www.current.tv/pods/tvfreeburningman/PD07162

They did a spectacular job of capturing what it felt like on the playa and we thank them!

 ”One of the neatest things I have seen in the self-expressive miasma that is Burning Man, the countercultural arts festival here in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, has been The Orb Swarm, a group of spherical robots designed to roll around the playa and interact with participants with lights, motion and sound.”

http://valleywag.com/tech/burning-man/the-orb-swarm-rules-the-night-295729.php

Here’s the text blurb from a short video piece that ran in the local news last night-

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=drive_to_discover&id=5584601

View a local archive.

i’ve made progress on the path smoother.  it takes a path made from a few points and converts it into a smoothed path (using cubic curves) and waypoints along that smoothed path with times and velocities associated with the waypoints.  the waypoints are all the same distance from each other in time.  the roundedness of the curves is adjustable as it the acceleration profile.  in some cases the path comes up a little short - due to inaccuracies in guessing when to start slowing down.  in any case good enough for now.  my test images are kinda fun so i thought i’d pass those along.

-trebor

a good one.