To Alexandra, Melonie, Jack, Megan, and Ms. Cacal:

I like that you drew your design. A big part of engineering is figuring
out how you are gong to build your robot, and the first step to building
anything is drawing it. One thing you did that none of the other Classes
did was actually put measurements on your drawing. You might consider
drawing a version that is "to scale." Ms. Calcal can explain what that
means.

The robot takes care of many of the needs of the astronauts. Using
Naturally Speaking is a great idea, since it would be awfully hard to use
a keyboard while the robot is moving around. How would the robot
communicate with the astronauts? Also, how will the robot move around? I
didn't see any "locomotors" (things that let the robot move) on your
design.

The problems with the speech interface that you pointed out are very good.
We have an entire research team hear who works on how to make a robot
understand phrases that can mean different things, like "draw the
curtains." How would you try to solve that problem? What if I told the
robot to "come over here, take this, and then go over there." How would
you design the robot to understand that?
Feel free to ask us more questions. The best way to solve a problem is to
really understand it. Keep up the good work.

-- Salvatore Domenick Desiano
Research Scientist
smile.