We’ve kept it a secret just long enough. The time has come to reveal what the Oceanside Robotics Club has actually been working on for the past two months.
Skippy and FIRST had just been a diversion to prevent our secrets from leaking. But now that it seems to be stable, the world is ready to know: we have developed a small humanoid robot (“android”) that we hope can help with tasks around the school. We’ve already deployed it in a test physics class to help a disabled student.
I’ll be honest: Devin and Matt did the most work on this, which caused some tension, but I am proud of my contribution: the name. Our dummy bot was called “Skippy,” which isn’t bad, but I really wanted this name to be great. At first I thought “C-3PO,” but I figured that if we were going to take this to market, we have to avoid trademark infringement. That’s when it hit me, and I decided that it should be named as a tribute to an author that did so much to advance our field.
In honor of my favorite Shakespearian scholar, this new droid is called ISAA.
But what kind of unveiling would this be without some media to back it up? It would be no kind, so here is an exciting video of ISAA running. Enjoy the video as a symbol of the speed of technological advancement. By summer, we expect to have ISAA writing technical documents, and perhaps creative works such as April Fool’s jokes in another year’s development.