The Robot Block Party was on the news yesterday, including a our very own Eggbot in action. You can watch the segment, titled “Robotics ‘Block Party’ Attracts Diverse Crowd To Palo Alto” over at CBS.
Tag Archives: robotics
Robot NightLife at CalAcademy
We’re excited to be bringing robots to the California Academy of Sciences Robot NightLife event on Thursday, March 27, 6-10 pm. This is a 21+ event and tickets are $12.
Robots in the Central Valley
Friday was a busy day in the pits at the Central Valley Regional FIRST Robotics Competition. The teams got their robots unpacked, inspected, and ran practice rounds prior to matches this weekend. We’re here with Fremont Robotics, and we’ll be taking pictures throughout the weekend and posting them (tagged by team number where identifiable) in this flickr set.
The challenge this year is fun to watch: the robots score goals with large exercise balls and earn extra points for passing to team members and throwing the ball over a beam. The event is free to attend and open to the public, so if you’re near Madera, California this weekend, we’d love to see you here!
Robots of BarBot 2013
Here are a few of the robots in attendance at BarBot 2013:
Schrödinger’s Martini, in which the amount of vermouth is indeterminate until box is opened and the drink observed.
Thinbot, pouring impeccably mixed drinks with style.
Manhattan Project and Mai Tai Project.
Outta Time, with a new LED lit control panel.
Tipsy Bot, using Legos to tip ingredients into your glass.
Our very own Drink Making Unit 2.1.
SW500 500SW (5:00 Somewhere) became affectionately known as Drink Drink Revolution or Dance Dance Intoxication. It judged your dancing skills and served you a drink thematically appropriate to your style.
Santa Barbot mixes drinks with super soaker components.
Not all the robots were serving drinks, and this lampshade-wearing robot seemed like it may have had a few too many.
No party is complete without R2D2, who wasn’t being used as a roving drink tray, since there were plenty of other robots to serve the humans.
Updated Nov. 9 to correct 500SW’s name.
CalGames 2013
This weekend, Oct. 4-5, is CalGames 2013, an off-season FRC competition. It’s being hosted by the team we mentor, Firebird Robotics, at Fremont High School here in Sunnyvale, California. The event is open to the public and free of charge for spectators. Matches are scheduled for 6:15-7:15 Friday night, start again at 8:15 on Saturday morning and everything wraps up with awards at 5:15 on Saturday afternoon.
If you’re in the area, come watch the robots shoot frisbees and climb the pyramids!
Client Bot by Nerd Industries
Mathias from Nerd Industries wrote in to tell us about their “Client Service Director Prototype” project. The Client Bot moves on a rail from one client logo the next, dusting each logo in sequence with a little brush. Mathias says:
We came up with the idea that it might be funny to build a robot holding a feather duster and constantly dusting the logos. We named the guy “our client service director” and started developing it.
The robot consists of an aluminum carriage. We put a multiphase motor inside and connected it to a robot arm. Also we attached an Arduino board to it as a controller and equipped it with a rechargeable battery pack. Everything has been mounted together with plastic screws to avoid conduction. The robot is powered through the rails.
The “feather duster” is actually a make up brush stolen from Christoph’s wife. You can see the general motion of the robot in the short clip below.
Client Service Director Prototype from Nerdindustries on Vimeo.
They’ve used a video of this charming robot to feature their client portfolio, and that’s where you can see it in its full glory.
Robotics Week and Upcoming Events
We are right in the middle of National Robotics Week, which runs April 6-14 and starts a string of events all over the country for makers of all kinds. We’ve listed a few upcoming highlights below:
- Robot Block Party—Wednesday, April 10 at Stanford University
- Exploratorium Opening Events—Wednesday, April 17 at Pier 15 in San Francisco
- RoboGames—Fri-Sun, Apr 19-21, 2013 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds
- Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam—Fri-Sun, April 26-28 at ITP-NYU in New York City, sponsored in part by the Open Source Hardware Association
- Robotfest—Saturday, April 27 at the National Electronics Museum in Linthicum, Maryland
- Exploratorium After Dark—Thursday, May 2 at Pier 15 in San Francisco
- Silicon Valley Surplus Crawl—Saturday, May 11 starting in San Francisco
- Hardware Innovation Workshop—Tues-Wed, May 14-15 at the College of San Mateo
- Maker Faire—Sat-Sun, May 18-19 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds
You can look for events in your area on the National Robotics Week Events site and the Maker Faire Map site—feel free to add your favorites in the comments. We’ll be exhibiting at RoboGames and helping Super Awesome Sylvia show off the Watercolorbot at Maker Faire. We hope to see you there!
ComBots Cup VII
This weekend, Saturday and Sunday, October 20-21, 2-7 pm is ComBots Cup VII at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. ComBots is the heavyweight championship for combat robotics and is one of the loudest, most entertaining robotics competitions there is.
Teams from all over the US, Canada and Brazil will be coming to California to fight for The ComBots Cup – the annual international robot combat championship now in its seventh year. The ComBots Cup is to fighting robots what the World Series is to baseball. The two-day event features robots weighing up to 220 pounds fighting to be crowned the world heavyweight champion.
To get a taste of it, check out the video above, which is one in a series from earlier events. You can get your tickets online now. We’ll hope to see you there!
