Less than three weeks to go

Good job last week, Warriors!  Especially to those participating in the presentation at the Toronto Audio Visual and Electronics Show on separating silicon from silicon carbide.  The presentation went very well and I think everyone found it entertaining and informative.

We made more progress on all fronts including:

a) The teamwork and communication show during the "build what we built" exercise was very good.  I especially liked the "E-C-O-L-E C-O-M-E-T-S Go Comets!"

b) Everybody learned to fly the drone.

c) Everybody learned to scan things in 3D

d) Nick, Alyssa, and Lais learned to convert a collection of pictures into a 3D model.

e) Tara and Macy learned to operate the infrared camera.

c) Lily and Olivia learned to use the gyro sensor.

In addition, after the Electronics show Tara, Olivia, Helen and I went to Lucknow, Ontario to see if we could get some drone pictures of cows.  Tara and Olivia's aunt and uncle (Paul and Christine - words of the week) raise cattle.  They let the girls fly the drone above the cows to see what we could learn about counting them.  They got a bunch of pictures which they stitched together into the image below, and if you zoom in you can see the individual cows in the closeup below that.

Stitched Images

Aerial Closeup

They also tried taking pictures with the infrared camera.  They attached the camera to the bottom of the drone and got one good picture of the car as the drone went up.  Unfortunately the camera fell off the drone almost immediately, but we were able to find it.  They took pictures from the ground after that, and are looking for a better way to attach it.  The pictures look promising, though.  Below are the pictures of the car from above, with the yellow area being the warm hood over the engine.  Also, there's a normal picture of the cows at the fence with another picture taken with the infrared camera showing that the cows are warm.

Car with a Warm Hood

Cows at the Fence

Infrared Cows at the Fence

Next we'll see if our 3D reconstruction techniques can tell us how tall the cows are.  If they look like cows, are as warm as cows, and are as tall as cows, we can be pretty sure they are cows, and not cow-shaped rocks or bushes.