#599 Robo Week

 Fun Fact #599

RoboWeek

People love robots in films and fiction where they often play interesting roles in the narrative, yet sometimes we often forget to look at the wonders that Robotics is capable of here in the real world.

 In 2009, several leaders in the fields related to robotics (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math or STEM) appealed to THe US Congressional Board of Robotics to “Establish a National Roadmap” for robotics technology and shed greater light and interest on the subject. Then in 2010 The House of Representatives passed a resolution to designate The second full week of April as “National Robotics Week”, but several of the 50 inaugural events of that year found this name cumbersome and simplified it in marketing as “Roboweek”.

SInce then the robotics field has exploding in advancements STEMing from robotics. New tech like “Openflow” allowing for facial recognition integration into security systems, 3-d Printers such as Bamboo and Prusa getting smaller and more powerful, and space Technology expanding with products like SpaceX. One of the most notable accomplishments comes from the University of Pennsylvania which created the world's first “Grey Goo” using borrowed semiconductor technology to create self replicating Nanobots in 2019.Their plan is to use this tech in injectable surgeries in the future to accomplish such jobs as targeting cancerous cells, but the tech has a long way to go.

 By 2017 more than 300 events were held by the company IRobot –a company founded by the 1990 graduates of MIT– and since 2015, Irobot has been the official organizer of Roboweek each year. They even host a search engine for STEM Events going on in your community each week. Yet other groups like FIRST Robotics, VEX, and The National Robotics Competition, and many Museums have combined their events into the action to help reach even more people. Even Woodward is involved with advancing STEM thanks to their support of Robotics programs such as FTC, FRC, FLL, and Discover Programs covering an age range from 4years old- 12th grade, which you can read about on the upward post they published today. 

Thanks for reading and as always please have a Wonderful Week. . . just don’t get too close to the grey goo. That stuff terrifies me. 

https://www.designnews.com/automation/national-robotics-week-sees-an-explosion-of-new-robots

https://www.nationalroboticsweek.org/events/p2

Picture taken by some of the students of Rockford Robotics showing off each of their "Unique Personalities” at a team dinner at “Smokey Notes BBQ” in Peoria. 

Student of The 2039 Rockford Robotics Team, Lillie Freedman holding one of the 3 awards given to the team during this year’s Robotics Competition season. This was “The Rising All-Star Award” and in FIRST Robotics History we are only the 111th team to receive it. 

Here’s a silly image of Local FRC Team Rockford Robotics’ Robot “Origami” accidentally parked on top of a game element. The driver of the robot at the time was a Rookie to Team named Yutiyen. It's impressive he both got the robot up on top of the ball (an opponent pushed the Robot at precisely the wrong moment), balanced and managed to bring it back down again to continue playing the match without issue. The image was taken on just as it started to come into contact with the ground again.