Thursday, September 12, 2013

We are reaching people!

Here are a few of the good things organizations active in the UAS and autism communities, as well as individuals aware of the TATTS project, are saying about the project and our blog:

 
"Really great stuff... everyone looks like they're having agreat time." - Lucy Kluessendorf
"Nice video's TATTS team, I enjoyed watching them all." - Tim Hornberger
"Very cool... Love the home vids.  I like the one with Mitchell saying "Sky time!" - Michael Braun
 
Also, look where viewers have come from that are hitting our blog to read about the TATTS project and what amazing things kids with autism can do.  All across the world!
 
 
 

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Pop the popcorn honey... we're going to the movies!

The kids have learned to fly on a simulator, built the hexarotor from scratch and successfully flown almost a dozen missions.  We've collected a great deal of experiences as well as lots of fantastic video.  Our final step in the project was to make project videos.  One aspect of that was to allow the kids to make their own movie from all the footage. 

What kind of movie would you produce if you had 4 GB worth of video footage, several hundred still shots and dozens of songs?  I can guarantee that each movie would be different.  That's certainly the case with the movies that the kids produced.  They are anywhere from 2-6 minutes each and have only tapped into a portion of all the great footage.  I'd urge you to take the time to watch them.

What amazes me is some of the similarities and stark differences in what each of them produced.  Most kids included the clips of crashing (lots of use of the term 'epic fail') and they all tended to include footage of themselves.  Who wouldn't right? 

Enjoy
 
Alan's Movie (blue shirt)
 
Kevin's Movie (bright blue t-shirt and glasses at @ 20 sec)
 
Harrison's Movie (red t-shirt @ 1:15)
 
Tate's Movie (walking with black t-shirt @ 42 sec)
 
 
Mitchell's Movie (flying @ 120 sec)

Monday, September 9, 2013

Aerial Movie Producers

The last phase of the TATTS Project is the creation of a video to tell the story of what the kids have done throughout this project.  A parent suggestion early on was to also let the kids build their own video based on still photos and footage that we've accumulated over the past several months.  Given that these kids are clearly tuned into the power of video, we decided that the suggestion was a great one.  With that we decided to produce multiple videos; a series of child produced personal videos and one official version that will go out to all the participants and their parents as well as our KickStarter supports who donated $100 or more to the project.

As with all aspects of this project, once given some direction, the kids take the project where they want.  It was enjoyable to see the kids laughing at videos of themselves from the air, marveling at the world from above and being creative with the video software.  Here's a video synopsis of their work in the lab.



We are compiling the videos at present and will post them in the future.

Thanks to the University of Wisconsin Landscape Architecture Department for providing us access to their computer lab for building the videos!