Ingolf's Parallel Career
 
Early Interest in automatic devices
   
         
As a child I spent many hours in my grandfather's chocolate factory.  I was fascinated by the automatic machines with their gears and levers.  My best toy was my train set, where several trains ran autonomously without crashing, controlled by automatic signals and switches.  I tried to build an "electronic brain" with relays for even more complex control.  At the  "Garten Bau Ausstellung IGA"-  International Horticulture Exhibition IGA - 1953 I was impressed by a robot with a photo cell   to detect people and to open doors - my first experience with machine vision. 
 
Build electronic devices

  
     
Later I built almost everything an electronic hobbyist can build:  radios - initially from vacuum tubes, then from early transistors and integrated circuits.  I built analog HI FI amplifiers, digital counters, and clocks.  My masterpiece was a measuring instrument, consisting of an oscilloscope, function generators, multi meter, and power supplies.
 
Electronic Vision
   
         
After reading Eduard Rheins book "Wunder der Wellen" (Miracle of waves) about the fascinating story of early television devices I built a Nipkow disk - a spinning disk with 32 holes in a spiral track, a vacuum photo cell, amplifier, and a Neon light as a modulated light source.  I was able to transmit crude pictures with 32 lines resolution.  During my apprenticeship - mandatory for studying Physics  - at the NDR ( Radio/Tv Station in Hamburg) I had a closer look at an iconoscope.  For my PhD thesis I used a super orthicon for image capture and electronic circuits for image processing.  Later at Optitec I used a CCD imager with a very high frame rate.  Nowadays CCDs or CMOS imagers are widespread in digital cameras, webcams, and cell phones.
         
Computing
 

   
         
My first fully functional computer IR3 - a homebrew version of a Digital Equipment PDP8 computer - was running in 1972, may be one of the first personal computers in Germany.  (The Apple Computer was introduced 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley).  After building the hardware I became fascinated with Artificial Intelligence, Expert Systems, Problem Solver, and Neural Networks.
         
Human Brain
The ultimate computer is the human brain. 
 
My main interest is the human brain.  I am trying to understand the neural system in the cortex, cerebellum, limbic system.  My special interest is the vision system with the "where" and "what" pathways. Currently I am writing a book to be published at the end of 2007.  I want to learn from Mother Nature and apply the knowledge to the field of robotics. 

 
Robotics
Autonomous robots have to understand the environment - they have to know "where" is "what".  Vision is  computational very intensive.  Early academic research was hampered by slow computers.  The famous Stanford cart (1965) looked at a scene, calculated for 20 minutes, then moved a step. 
Now we have field programmable gate arrays FPGA with 1000 times the performance at 1/1000 the cost.  Low cost cameras and high performance computing make smart cameras and interesting robots possible.  At the "Homebrew Robotics Club" HBRC" in Silicon Valley I am trying to introduce vision controlled robots. 
   
   

2005:  I presented  "3D Vision and Vision Guided Grasp" 
2005 my son and I participated in Robo Games2005  at the San Francisco University
2006:  My team presented "Object Recognition using Lowe's SIFT algorithm"
2007:  Presentation of "FPGA Vision and FPGA Controller Project"  Slideshow
2007:Robo Games 2007 in San Francisco at Fort Mason
2008: Yuri's Night Moffett Field Mountain View
 


Hanno Dancebot
2007 my son started MyDanceBot and I got involved with that project.
 

    

"Help hobbyist build balancing robots"
             
Roboticore
2006 I started Roboticore together with 3 Silicon Valley Engineers "Building Core technologies for the Robotic Revolution".
Our first product will be Visibot, an autonomous robot with vision capabilities.

     
         
Ingolf's Projects
Ingolf's Professional Career Ingolf's Parallel Career
Ingolf's First Personal Computers to measure is to know
Hand - Eye Coordination RoboGames
Model of a Windmill Jumping Jack
Dollhouse Ingolf's Big Picture
Sonogram Viewport
Line follower  
 

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