Store Opening Again - Amazing Embroidery and Robots too

I will be opening the store again Tuesday, Nov 22nd - Friday, Dec 9th.  

As always, you can order in between when the store is 'closed' but I might not be here to ship immediately or I may know that I have a deadline or family events that keep me from being attentive.  Unlike many stores, I am only one person and I am also handling all the stitching for class models, instruction writing, thread packaging, kit packing, and the R&D and production of new materials.  Put on top of it working with museums on various historical research and you have a perfect storm of being pulled in many directions.  So putting the store on an Open/Close situation was a way to better control the expectations.  

When the store is open I am around and shipping is fast.  

Now what has been up?   This fall has been consumed by several research projects and trips to take the knowledge that has built up from thread manufacture, stitch identification and working on these big reproduction projects and apply it to some big questions in the field of historic embroidery.  An intermediate goal was to present my findings on Martha Edlin at Winterthur in October.  I am currently working on multiple research papers with colleagues with an end of year due date.  I am very excited about the future publications and will let everyone know when they are available.

One set regards an amazing piece of gold and silver embroidery using the needlelace, interlacing and braid stitches that I figured out and taught in courses online.  The piece is currently on display at the MET in the huge (and amazing) Tudors Exhibition.  If you are anywhere near NYC before the exhibition goes off display - PLEASE go see this piece of embroidery.  It is next to many fabulous portraits of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.  It will take almost a book to explain what has been learned from this piece.  During the research, the object went from an unknown to a bearing cloth for christening. 

MET 2016.526 Bearing Cloth

When I am not consumed with the research and embroidering on the Four Seasons Double Casket, family has to be first.  This fall has been consumed with three main things - both boys are applying to college or grad school, the younger has had three concussions which have just made me drop things at a moments notice constantly to deal with the ramifications that haven yet ended since mid Sept, and then the older kid was in a worldwide robotics competition.

I know you will say - hey, but I thought he graduated!?  Yes, but there are a few technology foundations or  government agencies which try to jump start major technology leaps with these high prize money competitions.  These are the type of things that are constantly talked about in tech circles and end up becoming NOVA episodes.  Commercial spaceflight was the result of a massive contest by a foundation called XPrize put up about 20 years ago.  That's right - the first university or corporate collaboration which could make sub-orbital flight got big money.  Now we have Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX.  Ever seen those creepy robot dogs or backflipping humanoid robots?  Another result of XPrize and DARPA.  Carbon capture (XPrize), autonomous cars (DARPA), and many others have kick started new technology industries.  

Well the research that my son started freshman year ended up being entered into the Avatar XPrize competition in 2021 and became the 3rd place semi-finalist.  That won them a spot in the finals and money to go whole hog trying to develop a full system.  He was on co-op when the grad students and profs called him and told him and begged him to find as much time in 2022 to work on it.  So other than a few classes, he has spent the last year on this project.  What is it?  

The concept is a robot that is multifunctional that can go into a situation, driven by an operator that is as far away as possible (in this case in a room far from an arena), like around the world.  The operator can use the video from the robot (up to each team how to implement) to see and use some sort of control that gives them feedback (called haptics) to feel what the robot is doing.  So if the robot reaches out to grab something, you feel what it picks up.  Some teams, including my son's team, had a hand/arm system that the operator put their arms in and everything their hands did was translated one-to-one to the robot arms.  This is why it is called Avatar XPrize.  The use cases are enormous, but the easy to understand one is a disaster at a nuclear power plant where the robot goes in and the operator can actually act if there to mitigate the situation but not die instantly of radiation poisoning.  

It was a tremendous amount of work.  The results were stunning.  He ended up leading the mechanical side of the team and we all flew to LA to watch the finals live with the teams from around the world competing.  Only four teams successfully finished all the robotic tasks in the time limit and their speed and user interface were judged.  His team won the $1 Million 3rd place prize and was the highest placed US team between companies and universities!  

What was so funny was he also trained the judge/operators.  Part of the competiton was to evaluate the user interface and how good the haptics were; so the team only had 45 min to train someone given to them as the operator (a person versed in the field of robotics but completely unfamiliar with the system) and couldn't direct them but sat behind to answer a direct question if required.  Most of these trainers were stoic, but David just isn't.  His facial expressions were noted by the profession announcers and were tweeted around the world by viewers.  He said in one interview - 'if anyone thought I didn't care....'

Each round was 25 minutes but this video cuts it down to the most exciting moments - When you see the robot work with the drill - the audience went nuts.  Most operators would forget that they had two robot arms on most systems.  Of course my family was quite excited with how it all turned out - and I didn't get any embroidery done that week (but did squeeze a visit to the storage at LACMA!).