It has been an exciting week as we welcome the new freshmen to campus. Of course, several of them have already been working in the lab on VEX robots over the summer.
Most likely, the regular lab meeting times this semester for robotics will be Tuesday and Friday afternoons (from 3PM to 5PM) and on Saturday afternoons (from 12 to 3). This will depend on mentor coverage. We will not start up regularly until the BUA Activities Fair on Thursday, Sept 10th. At that event we will do a full demo of Scorpion!
I wanted to announce an opportunity out at WPI Tuesday evening (which is a school night). This invitation comes from Ken Stafford, the lead Coach for the WPI Robotics program. If there is interest (and you are ahead on your homework) I will try to coordinate some carpooling to this event.
Don’t know if you watched it or not, but ABC ran a 5 episode series of BattleBots this summer. If you had you’d know that “Bite Force” won the world championship. “Bite Force” was built/driven by Paul Ventimiglia (WPI, ’12) and WPI was it’s major sponsor. Paul was also part of FRC190 (having a substantial influence in our 2007 world championship season) and is now a mentor on FRC254. We currently have Bite Force on display on the WPI campus and Paul will be coming next Tues to do a presentation on this robot. We expect about 300-400 folks for this presentation/reception and would welcome local FRC teams to attend this event.
You are invited to attend a dessert reception for Paul Ventimiglia (WPI, ’12; former mentor FRC190, current mentor FRC254), designer/builder/driver of ”BITE FORCE”, the 2015 World Champion BattleBot. This event will be held in the Campus Center of WPI on Tues, 8 Sep from 2000-2130. The 250-pound BITE FORCE, replete with its battle scars from defeating the number 1 seeded TOMBSTONE in the finals round, will be demonstrated (safely!) and be ready for selfie poses. Paul will discuss his design and strategy for winning this competition and include a bunch of great videos. Following his presentation, there will be a Q and A session where he will be joined by new WPI student Will Bales, builder/driver of the famous HYPERSHOCK battlebot as well as one of stars of the movie “BOTS HIGH.”
In the News:
New Crew to ISS with LEGOS: (Reauters) A new group of astronauts is off to the International Space Station and they are bringing LEGOs with them!
