Angry roboticist drops science

Here's Katy Levinson's semi-drunken robotics tutorial from DEFCON XX in Vegas this past summer. To get a sense of Levinson's presentation style, imagine if Bill Hicks was a young, female roboticist. Watch this presentation and you will learn that four-way linkages are pimp, bolts are zinc-plated turds, and all robots should wear sunglasses. Levinson's last gig was designing an autonomous robot for the aborted US lunar mission, and now she works to save Hacker Dojo, the embattled hackspace in Mountain View that incubated Pinterest.

By popular demand, Defcon's angry little roboticist is back with more stories of robot designs gone awry that make practical lessons on making better robots. Drinking will happen: vodka-absconding scoundrels are not invited.
This talk will cover material assuming the average audience member is a relatively intelligent coder with a high-school physics/math background and has seen linear algebra/calculus before. The intent is to navigate people new to robotics around many lessons my teams and I learned the "hard way," and to introduce enough vocabulary for a self-teaching student to bridge the gap between amateur and novice professional robotics. It will not cover why your Arduino doesn't work when you plugged your USB tx into your RS232 tx.

Katy Levinson Defcon 20 - Robots: You're Still Doing It Wrong

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: cussin • DEFCON • happy mutants • makers • robots • videos

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Tom Pappalardo

I was like “why is she quitting science?”
- katylevinson
  
  Sometimes the stuff that you care about and need to make work isn’t fixed with code. :/
Jimb1233

not saying she doesnt know her stuff but that is painful to watch!
Tony Howat

SHOUTING ABOUT HOW FUCKING GREAT WE ARE AT OUR JOBS. WOO.
SomeGuyNamedMark

Needs more gimmicks
TrevorSweet

Alcohol’s cool, mmkay? Swearing too.
oasisob1

It is pretty hard to take a woman in a dress seriously. Someone so pretty can’t possibly be smart or have anything intelligent to say on the subject of robotics. She’s probably making up all that stuff about learning from her mistakes. I’d be willing to be she snuck out of the kitchen and read all that stuff in her husband’s lab notes. The proof is in the video; she’s wearing his hat. (All assholery aside, she’s a damn genius who knows better than to take herself too seriously)
- sarahnocal
  
  I knew there had to be some comment about her being a her.
  - taras
    
    Do you think she’s single, oasisob1? You might have a chance. She is, after all, very pretty.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Could oasisob1′s comment have been more obviously ironic?
- katylevinson
  
  You got me. In this video I actually am being used as a puppet with a cleverly hidden exoskeleton (controlled by men who actually understand robots).
  - oasisob1
    
    Someone was upset you wore a dress to an earlier appearance, so at this appearance you wore a fancier dress. That’s beyond awesome. Kicking that topic to the curb, I loved the whole talk. You were maybe just a little bit energetic, but we learned what ought to be valuable lessons in building robots and some fun stuff about NASA and the less obvious challenges of doing stuff on the moon. Worth an hour of my time, thanks!
    - http://www.facebook.com/markus.schafer.77770 Markus Schäfer
      
      And her brain ist still more beautiful than the dress. I wish I could have been the hat.
humanresource

Eat your heart out, TED.
- nixiebunny
  
  Good idea for a new TED series:
  
  TEDbooze. Famous people doing “My Drunk Kitchen.”
http://www.beaucomeaux.com bocomo

Presentation style? What presentation style?

That was painful

I don’t doubt she’s brilliant, but she’s not so good at presenting (like having a prof in college who is a leader in her field, but doesn’t really have a knack for teaching)
- Damian Barajas
  
  Did you understand what she said? Did it make sense?
  
  Depending on the answer to this question you can talk about efficacy. Oh wait, your talking about style!
  
  (Yes, it was a bit rough at moments I’ll give you that much, but I was able to follow the presentation, it made sense and I learned a few things)
  - katylevinson
    
    I’d really like to hear where you think I can improve too :)
- katylevinson
  
  Super open to suggestions on improving. :)
  - elix
    
    The only thing I particularly would suggest is tightening up preparation a bit for the “um, um” gaps and the blips in remembering things, but once the vodka starts all bets are off anyway. I can see how some people might find the pause-for-cute-photo technique to be unnecessary/a distraction, but I have no complaints about it.
    
    That being said, this isn’t Toastmasters, this is fucking DEFCON. You’re passionate about robotics (this is the biggest understatement on the Internet for the next five minutes) and you’ve been selected to give a talk about it . If you want professional and ultra-slick and rehearsed, look at academic presentations (the serious kind where people are in suits, not the practical-demo kind), not DEFCON.
    
    Also, of course you’re hung-over. It’s DEFCON.
Melissa S

I am in love!

She almost made me wish I had done engineering (like everyone thought I would) for about 10 seconds…
RJ

The bit about zinc-plated turds piqued my interest, but not enough to watch a 49-minute lecture on robotics. I presume she’s referring to how zinc-plated hardware can still corrode, given enough wear and tear. Stainless steel and aluminum are probably better choices, when TIG welding isn’t practical.
- bcsizemo
  
  I haven’t watched the video either, but zinc plated bolts are more or less self defeating if used in a heavily corrosive environment since the nut cuts into the threads and wears off the zinc…
  
  Bare aluminum (like metal on metal contact) also has issues with binding due to aluminum oxide formation.
  - katylevinson
    
    I’m super interested in learning more about this (I’ve never designed for a longer-term project, so the areas of stress over time and corrosion are things we haven’t touched yet). Can you point me to some science?
- katylevinson
  
  It was actually meant to remind newbie roboticists (who frequently have almost no mechanical background whatsoever) that normal bolts off the shelf aren’t meant to be put into sheer. Software people picking up physical design for the first time tends to be facepalmy.
  - oasisob1
    
    We have open source libraries for telling robots how to move forward, backwards, how to turn left or right. Why not have open source libraries for roboticists, telling them how not to destroy walls or start fires? For that matter, open source libraries of lessons learned ought to be everywhere for everything.
    - katylevinson
      
      Even when you package it as entertainment, it’s pretty hard to get people to RTFM.
      - http://twitter.com/MissySB Simone Davalos
        
        True that. You can cut and paste code. It’s hard to cut and paste life experience.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Katrina-van-Malksvig/100000571611598 Katrina van Malksvig

a proud moment for shouty drunk chicks everywhere!
Jeff House

As a software guy who keeps coming back to hardware, iterating closer and closer to making something vaguely robotish, it’s great to see examples of where things go wrong — so when I am finished facepalming — or perhaps even before then — I’ll think “Wait, wasn’t there some drunk woman ranting about that…if only I can remember where and in what capacity…” and it will come back to me.

Also, awesome.
jacoblyles

this made me want to build more robots, drink more alcohol, and wear more fancy dresses. Inspiring!
http://www.facebook.com/firm.warez Firm Warez

Fun as a video, but it was much better in person.
katylevinson

Please keep sending the stories, photos and videos of failbots! These are amazing, and if you guys are cool with it, I’d love to share your experiences with everybody next year!
- humanresource
  
  Just so you know, you got an arts/law graduate to sit through an hour-long robotics lecture. Respect.
  - http://www.facebook.com/markus.schafer.77770 Markus Schäfer
    
    And a linguist. Respect indeed :)
http://www.facebook.com/markus.schafer.77770 Markus Schäfer

Man, I find smart and funny people incredibly attractive.
I guess I should start saving money to get to see the next talk in that vein :)
http://singedrac.livejournal.com Singe

Oh man I wanna marry her. I got fired from NASA Ames too. -_-
falcifer

I really enjoyed this, it was most refreshing to see so much emphasis on good old-fashioned engineering like analogue control theory and dynamics to get things done elegantly and intelligently rather than by throwing lots of code at problems.

I was most impressed at the ablity to explain complicated things so well while pished, a talent I can only dream of having. I did find all the nerd humour cliches all too familiar and tiresome, however. Ms. Levinson is a steel actuated fist in the face of stereotypes associated with women in science, but she doesn’t assure me that being in science doesn’t necessarily mean being “from the internet lololol!” Does she care? Probably not, and neither should you.

Cracking work!
http://twitter.com/SkyAuror3 SkyAuror3

“I got a lot of shit last year for doing a talk in a dress, so this year I wore a fancier dress” – my philosophy on Dressing As An Engineer.