Hubo a Super Star?

On Monday the 12th Jeong Hoon Kim, famous Pop Singer visited the Hubo lab for a photo shoot with the stylish Hubo. Dr. Jun Oh built the singer a 7 degrees of freedom motion platform stage that was used in his concert performances. I had the the opportunity to be the Stutman/Testing personnel when Mr. Kim was producing his Choreography at KAIST with this platform featured below. In my good spirit I dressed up in full body pads and gave the group some smiles and laughs for the late evening/morning. Mr. Kim invited us to his concert but we could not make it! But he did recognize me and made an effort to come over and talk with me! Such a nice Guy!!

Korea Family Vacation - In Photos

Model Completed

At the end of December I finished The complete CAD model of HUBO 2. By completion I mean, I worked out all the bugs that I knew of and assembled the frame components with its respective shells. This complete model will now allow the PIRE team to in essence have their own Hubo 2, just in CAD form. Sorry I can't give you a peak inside...but enjoy this picture!

Designeer Company Vist

After my successful completion of work with Korean company Designeer, the owner invited me to visit his office and facility located in Southern Seoul. I was welcomed to stay for a weekend in the beginning of December. Before visiting the company he toured me ppersonally through Seoul. I have been to Seoul before, but I discovered some much more that the city has to offer. I visited the COEX building and Express Bus Terminal among many others. The COEX houses underground mall and 4,500 tons of water under ground Aquarium. The Express Bus Terminal other than being a bus station is connected to a 3 story mall. In the basement is a grocery store and the largest selection dessert vendors that you can find in Seoul (I would recommended the Chocolate covered waffles!). Another place visited was the Hooters Bar. You have to experience a Korean one, I'm a guy come on! Ok well to the Bussness, Mr. lee featured in the picture is the only person in South Korea to have possession of HOAP-2. This was very surprising to me that he had one of these. He allowed me to take a look at it, it gave me a lot of great ideas for our future submission to Robogames. We also talked over many authentic dinners about our cultures and experiences. I tried coagulated pigs blood, it was actually pretty good! I gained not only a business contact, but also a friend level contact. We also discussed a possibility of future involvement of myself with a few of company projects that do not related to HUBO lab. He is also is expanding his business to the US in the next year so, I believe I could be a valuable contact due to dealing with his company originally in Korea.

Working with Korean Industry

When Dr. Jun Oh tasked me to make a complete model of Hubo 2, I was under the impression it was only for use by the PIRE team. Undisclosed to me the original intent was to be used to facilitate the manufacturing of a "life size" physical Model of Hubo 2. Since November of 2008 I have been working closely with a manufacturing company based in Seoul. The company is called "Designeers" it merges Design and functionality with Engineering, hence the name http://www.designeers.net/) The company is notable for designing the PIRO robotic show case at Postech University in Pohang, South Korea. (shown above) They are also the company that designed the shells that encase Hubo 2. The company used my complete CAD model to generate tool paths for their manufacturing needs. This is unlike previous "mock" models of Hubo, where the inside of the robot was just plastic studs to hold the robot in a posed position. This model has the same detail as the functional Hubo 2 frame and components, but all pieces are made from plastic. The model is currently being showcased in the KAIST research Show Room next to the Book Store. It will eventually be permanently displayed to the public at Daejeon National Science Museum.
It is a true achievement to show chase my skills permanently even after I leave and it truly shows that my CAD is accurate for all the pieces did fit together seamlessly. I also learned many valuable skills with working with secondary companies that I did not expect to learn from my PIRE experience.

November 10th - National Science Musem

This weekend we decided to go to the National Science Museum. The museum is much larger than the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA but smaller than the Smithsonian in, Washington DC, just for perspective. The museum is packed with many venues like Geology, Space, Botany, Engineering, and Physics to name a few. So now here is a virtual tour of the Museum for your viewing pleasure. Outside the museum had the Chinese zodiac signs as figurines that resembled robots. The 12 figures lead up to two massive robots that stood about 30ft in the air. The entrance fee was only 1,000 won (equal to about $00.50). Around behind the build was an assortment of Korean war era armored vehicles. The Main building consisted of four floors with the center open. Bryan and I spent about 4 hours exploring and being fascinated by the hands on displays. The museum is geared to teach Korean youngsters about Science and Technology. Amongst all the displays the most interesting display was the terrarium located on the bottom floor. It had exotic plants local to Korea on the top and a full aquarium on the under it. I would give the Museum an A+ for accomplishing this goal of getting kids excited about science/engineering topics. They were introducing topics that Bryan and I only just learned in our first and second years of college. The only bad part (well for foreigners) of the museum is the supporting information was all in Korean. Only the display titles were in English, so in essence we did a lot of "window shopping". I will leave it off with a video of one of the displays that showed simple mechanical machines that did absolutely nothing, but was really entertaining!

November in December?

The following posts I am going to recap the events that happened in November. A Busy schedule kept me from updating, so I hope you enjoy!