Thompson Robotics Expo 2011

This past Saturday, my daughter and I had fun at the Thompson Robotics Expo up in Loveland and we set up a table for SHARC to demo Data Bus and Pokey.

Pokey, my Trinity-style firefighting robot, ran some demos where the little robot used rudimentary machine vision to search for a 'candle' (flashlight), drive forward to the white floor marker, and turn on the fan to 'blow out' the candle.

Data Bus, my Sparkfun AVC entry, was set up to send telemetry updates to the Happy Killmore Ground Control Station (HK-GCS) demonstrating GPS, attitude, odometry and heading sensors. I also set up a slide show on a digital picture frame to show Data Bus' anatomy as well as some pics from the 2011 AVC.

We got to watch some VEX and First Lego League (FLL) competitions and talk to a number of kids about the robots on display. It was fun to see young roboticists' eyes light up seeing what else is possible with robotics.

Sparkfun was there with some really cool displays and some real nice guys manning the booth. There were a few other booths, one with a 3d printing machine.

I was too busy manning the booth and keeping my little girl out of trouble to know what happened with the robotics competitions, but it was pretty obvious everyone was having a blast, us included!