Robotics Revolution - August 6, 2016

Post date: Aug 18, 2016 7:7:41 PM

On August 6, we had the privilege of participating in Robotics Revolution, a STEM promotion event organized by The MUSE in Knoxville. This is a really neat event which brings together organizations from across the region to get kids interested in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. As the name implies, there's a large robotics component including a bunch of FIRST LEGO League teams. One of the really interesting activities during the day was a sumo bot competition which consisted of teams pitting LEGO Mindstorms based robots against each other complete with stage, bleachers and an announcer!

This was the first year the second floor was opened and we were honored to be the anchor for this area. It was really an ideal perch to view the activities of the day and we setup a couple of play areas as well as our largest Knoxville display so far.

We had a great turnout from the club wth 17 members participating including Mike from Huntsville and the Joy's from Nashville. Public attendance was also strong with over 1600 visitors for the day. This continued the trend of increased public interest year over year for this event.

Our play areas proved to be quite popular with a huge amount of interest in the simple 2x4 green brick. It was quite interesting to watch the piles of brick morph throughout the day into larger and larger creations.

For our displays, we assembled our largest Great Ball Contraption to date with support from GBC Guru Tom Atkinson and the Huntsville chapter who both provided a generous supply of balls. We also displayed several standalone MOCS, a Micropolis layout, a Mindstorms brick sorter and a large train layout.

Thanks to everyone for their hard work making this happen, The MUSE for again being outstanding hosts and to all the public who came out to see what we were up to!