There’s a factory where perfect robots make perfect spacecraft and precision weaponry. The robots have names. They’re here to serve you. For now.
The robots work with smooth, almost spooky efficiency, and not just at boring, repetitive assembly line tasks. A hefty robot arm hauls a rack of parts for six Talon laser-guided rockets to an oven meant to test their endurance against extreme heat. The door of the Thermotron opens automatically just as the arm reaches it and shuts when the parts are inside. It’s Pee Wee’s Playhouse, but with clean rooms and pieces of deadly precision weapons.
The jewel of Raytheon’s virtual reality efforts is called the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, or just CAVE for short. It’s a stage ringed by screens that display stereoscopic 3D and augmented-reality images. Donning glasses with antennae that tell the system where your face is aimed, a viewer can fly through the layout of a new missile factory, coordinating the ballet of robots, humans, and hardware. This is important whether you’re setting up a new plant or adapting an existing one to accommodate a new government contract. Even better, Raytheon can put suppliers and customers inside the VR to show them how it plans to get the work done.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
