My engineering colleagues, Drs. Ted Burke and Damon Berry, hosted a brilliant RoboSlam last Friday.  They had recruited a diverse crowd of participants to help them refine the way they teach kids to build robots.  You can see the basic method (which is being tweaked for use with a new group of kids in May) on their RoboSlam website.  I’ve attempted to capture the excitement (and my confusion) in the images below.

Introduction to RoboSlam

Opening our kits

Most of the parts fit into one little box

The RoboSlam site provides step-by-step instructions

Emma and her nephew, Ryan

Exploring my kit of parts

Ted offering assistance

In retrospect I see I’d already made a mistake!?!!

Here, I felt I was making progress

Richard Hayes gets animated

Damon, Finbar, and John considering techniques

Full steam ahead for Gavin

Mike, Ted, and Sarah Jane making swift work of their robot

Ryan and Emma were flying along, too!

Mike assembling the chassis

Mike and Sarah Jane worked so well as a team…

…it made me wish I wasn’t working alone….

…becasue all the teams around me were progressing nicely.

Ryan and Emma got their lights blinking and wheels spinning.

Meanwhile, Ted had to help me troubleshoot.

Sarah Jane made quick work of the programming tasks.

But it turned out my two chips were both defective, and I had a couple of wires “crossed.”

Mike and Sarah Jane’s success attracted an audience.

Richard had his robot blinking and spinning in no time, too.

Finbar O’Meara’s robot i action.

Robot testing!

Finishing touches for Ruth’s robot…

…followed by a successful test run.

Michael had structural issues similar to mine.

Damon Berry and John McGrory discussing programming

A proud robot owner

Ted… still diagnosing my problems 😛

I was really ready to head to Ryan’s Pub once we finally got my robot blinking and its wheels spinning… sort of.

Where we discussed the ins and outs of robot construction

over pints of Guinness and cups of tea.

Before the event, Ted sent me this:

Hello All,

You’re receiving this because you’re on our list of participants for the upcoming RoboSlam workshop. Hopefully you’re still willing and available! If so, please reply to let us know so that we can confirm our numbers.

The details are:

• Date: Friday 22nd March
• Time: 2-6pm
• Location: DIT Kevin St, room TBC

What happens over the course of the afternoon is this:

1. We give each of you a bag of carefully selected low-cost components and a link to some online instructions.
2. You build and program a small autonomous robot.
3. Damon and I hover around offering friendly guidance.
4. We all try out our robots!

We previously ran this workshop as a public event in the MAKESHOP which is part of the Science Gallery at Trinity College. It was a resounding success and it convinced us that this has real potential for a wide audience. Our next workshop with ordinary participants is with a larger group of transition year school students who will be visiting Kevin St in May. What you (extraordinary participants) will be doing on March 22nd is basically the same activity that the participants normally do, but what we’re trying to achieve in this session is slightly different:

• Improvement: We want your ideas on how we can refine the RoboSlam recipe. You have been selected for your expertise, wisdom and creativity. Experience the workshop, then think carefully about how we can make it better.
• Promotion: We want to recruit mavens. Makers clubs and workshops are emerging as a critically important channel for getting talented people with a natural interest in technology involved in engineering. We think RoboSlam is a good recipe, so we’re eager to bring it to a wider audience.

Once we get the robots working, we may wish to reward ourselves with a visit to e.g. Ryan’s for some scholarly reflection on all that we have learned. Naturally, this part is optional.

Ted