Automaton

What conferences can professional roboticists attend? How can a high school student in Des Moines get involved with a robotics team? What engineering camps can a middle schooler attend? The just-launched RobotEvents.com has put together calendars and directories of all the events your inner robot geek could possibly want to see. Alternatively, those seeking to promote their robotics-related organizations, competitions, and off-season events can advertise them (for a fee) on the site. This is a really nice way to bring all the cool stuff together in one place -- and check out the neat fundraising plan they recommend to teams trying to raise money!

For anyone in the Boston, Mass area, you might be interested in this event at MIT tomorrow (Wednesday) night, a session called "Robots: The Next Wave of the Robot Revolution" that will "explore the advancing robot invasion across all of those sectors." There's a panel of speakers from a few robotics companies, networking receptions, and recruiting (I'll be there representing Bluefin). There's a small registration fee, though it's free for students.

The Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts is the first and currently only college or university in the nation to offer an undergraduate robotics engineering degree. The school is kicking off the program tomorrow with a Symposium event called "Engineering the Revolution", where attendees will hear from industry superstars about the role roboticists will play in the near future. Registration is still open.

Even if you can't make it to the event, definitely check out the major itself. This is a really great new program built not only on what broad theoretical background roboticists will need to really make a difference, but on the practical, hands-on experience for students to prepare themselves for the workforce. (And both Erico and I are big fans of that!)

For the college-aged (and graduate-student-aged) among you, I wanted to point out that the NASA Robotics Academy is accepting applications for its 2008 summer program. Students are hired to work on projects in teams of 4-5 at either Goddard or Marshall Space Flight Center. The internship is residential (you'll live with other interns) and it does include a stipend.

I'm an alum of the 2005 program (its inaugural year) when I worked on a planetary rover design project with Goddard in conjunction with a lab at the University of Maryland; it was a good time and the trips to see other robotics labs -- we went to Johnson Space Center, MIT's CSAIL, and Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute -- was unbeatable.

Also, you get a discount at the NASA gift shops. Just saying.

Application deadline is 15 January, and you'll need some recommendations, so get crackin'!

Illustration: Alan Chan for IEEE Spectrum

Interested in building your own space elevator?

You know, that motorized climber attached to a 100,000-km long superstrong cable stretching from Earth's surface to a counterweight in space, capable of whisking people and cargo to the heavens.

A student robotics competition is calling participants to do just that. Well, not a full-size elevator, but a small functional prototype. The organizers call it the "Space Elevator, Jr."

The contest, organized by Ahad Nasab, a professor of engineering technology at Middle Tennessee State University, in Murfreesboro, is part of the Earth & Space Conference 2008, to take place 3-5 March 2008 in Long Beach, Calif.

The competition calls for students from high schools and colleges to build a climber able to move up and down a 6-meter long ribbon using power received solely by a light source at the base of the ribbon. Bonus points if it carries a payload all the way to the top. It should be fun!

For all the details, visit the page of the competition: http://www.mtsu.edu/~anasab/spaceelevator.htm

Robotics Trends, a web portal of many things robotic, has just re-launched its site. The new site does a really nice job of putting together a ton of information about industry, academia, conferences, jobs, and other resources and presenting it in an easy to read way. Check it out!

Robotics Trends also runs the RoboBusiness conference, this year 8-10 April in Pittsburgh, and registration is going on as we speak.

I'll be attending the RoboBusiness conference in Pittsburgh next Tuesday and Wednesday. They have an excellent set of conference sessions lined up and I'm excited to see the companies that are boothing (especially Ugobe, whose Pleo I have yet to see in person). Have any questions for the exhibitors or speakers? Let me know!

If you're near San Jose, Calif., you might want to check the "Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon" exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art.

The exhibit features sculptures, paintings, photographs, multimedia installations, and other creations by more than 20 artists, who respond to the evolution of robotics technology "with optimism, pessimism, and humor, presenting work that ultimately explores our ambivalent attitudes towards robots."

In the video below, JoAnne Northrup, a senior curator at the museum, gives an overview of the project:

Here are some photos and videos. The exhibit runs through 19 October.

Tonight at 8 PM is the second monthly installment of Boston Robotics Drinks at the Enormous Room in Central Square. Last month a small group of engineers from a few companies suggested an informal get-together for the robotics professionals in the area, and through chains of email about twenty-five or thirty people showed up throughout the night from several different companies in the area. It was a great opportunity to get to know the folks in industry and academia from the area and find out what everyone is working on. It's modeled off of the internationally successful Green Drinks, a similar monthly networking event for the sustainable/green engineering community.

So -- in the Boston area? Come on by tonight!

Not in Boston? Start your own and let us know!

The website mentorsearch.us has put together a comprehensive map of robotics competition events around the world. It's still very US-centric, but includes a number of events in the UK, Europe, and Asia, as well as a few other countries. Each flag on the map links to the site for the event with information on how to get involved helping these students become the next generation of robotics geeks.

At the moment it's focused on the various FIRST competitions, the VEX competition, and BEST Robotics, though hopefully they'll grow to include other options like Botball and the NURC ROV competition.

Students from Singapore's Nanyang Polytechnic university have won this year's Embedded Development invitational challenge of Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2008. Their solar powered robot, dubbed EMS (Environmental Monitoring System), processes air quality on the fly while autonomously navigating indoor and outdoor environments. It then transmits the air's Pollutant Standards Index (PSI), temperature and humidity wirelessly to a remote user.

This year's finals in Paris saw 370 finalists chosen from a pool of more than 200,000 students from over 100 countries and regions competing in nine categories centered around the motto: "Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment." The yearly event organized by Microsoft and endorsed by the United Nations is one of the largest student technology competitions.

With this year's winners announced, registration has opened for next year's Imagine Cup to be held in Egypt.

There was a time not too long ago when finding a local robotics club was near impossible for people in many cities. If you wanted to build a robot, you would entirely be on your own. But now, as robots begin to slowly take over the world, most builders can find a local group or local robotics competition.

But for those who can't, there are the robot internet contests. The typical rules are: build a cool robot, write about it, win something.

The most recent of these contests, the Instructables Robot Contest, just announced the winners today.

The winners are worth checking out. First there is the Experimental Robot Platform, which just so happens to also be my creation.

Second place was a Wall-E look-alike robot. And although airman00 didn't win, my personal favorite of the bunch was Chives, the Robot Butler. You can find a more detailed tutorial on his creation here.

The Unmanned Ground Vehicle used by the winners of the UK's Grand Challenge, Team Stellar

Robot contests are a great and increasingly popular way to boosting student education, promoting robotics to the general public and leveraging investment into robotics technology.

The past weeks have seen four such contests unroll. First, the Grand Challenge, held by the UK's Ministry of Defence. In many ways similar to the US DARPA Challenges, it focused on the best way to detect military threats in an urban environment. However, entries were not restricted to autonomous cars and most teams used combinations of flying and ground based robots. The competition was won by the Stellar Team, which united partners from small-to-medium enterprises, academia and major industrial partners.

The Asia-Pacific Robot Contest Robocon (official non-English site here), the largest Asian Oceanian College robot competition, took place last week at the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT) in India. Students competed on a task inspired from the Hindu festival Krishna Janmashtami, which involves people building human towers to break clay pots called "Dahi-Handi" suspended high above the ground. Similarily, robot teams had to collaborate to form a pyramid out of robots to reach into a Dahi-Handi and collect small cubes. If you don't get the picture this video may help.

Third, CAD software manufacturer Solidworks announced the winners of it's Grant Imahara VEXplorer Robot Challenge. ChemBot (see this video) is a remotely controlled robotic arm mounted on a mobile base with a wireless video camera. It allows to "prevent accidents from potentially dangerous experiments" by having the robot conduct them in your stead. Second place went to a walking quadruped dinosaur robot (video).

Finally, children in Japan have just been putting their robot skills to the test in this week's qualifying for the World Robot Olympiad in Tokyo. More than 80 teams constructed robots to find their way around an obstacle course and complete tasks. The best 24 teams will participate in the Olympiad to be held in Yokohama, Japan in November.

A giant piece of robot art has recently roamed the streets of Liverpool, UK. The robot spider, 50 feet high and weighing in at a stunning 37 tons, was created by a team of French theatrical engineers to mark Liverpool's "European Capital of Culture" celebration. The spider named "La Princesse" is the latest brainchild of François Delarozière (who was also behind the Sultan's Elephant spotted in London a couple of years ago) and his company La Machine.

Made from steel and reclaimed poplar the robot had 50 hydraulic axes and stunned crowds on its journey through the city, spewing water, wind, smoke, flames, and even snow in the process.

The project's website has some fascinating pictures of the beast.

Image: La Machine, (c) Matthew Andrews 2008