Monthly Archives: April 2017

ST. LOUIS The worlds largest and most prestigious robotics championship returned to St. Louis this week for the final year of a seven-year run.

About 15,000 youths in kindergarten through high school from 33 countries gathered at Americas Center and Union Station on Wednesday for the annual FIRST robotics championship.

Students had to design, build and program their own robot in a matter of weeks to compete in certain challenges. For example, the robots in the high school division have to shoot lightweight balls into a tall tower, hang gears on hooks and climb a rope in an arena while fending off potential blocks from rival robots.

The championship, which was also held in Houston earlier this month, is the flagship event of the international nonprofit FIRST For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

Engineer Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway Human Transporter, started FIRST in 1989 to get children excited about science, technology, engineering and mathematics the way they are about sports like football and basketball.

Right now, we celebrate athletes, singers and movie actors and actresses, but our culture really doesnt celebrate the great minds, said Mitch Comer, robotics coach for Camdenton (Mo.) High Schools LASER 3284 team, which is competing this week. What were really trying to do is foster a culture where we celebrate great minds.

Robotics has steeply gained in popularity since the founding of FIRST. More than 460,000 young people on more than 52,000 teams worldwide participated in FIRST this school year.

The program boasts impressive outcomes for students.

A study released this month by Brandeis University researchers found that FIRST participants, regardless of characteristics such as family income and area of residence, are more than twice as likely to show continued interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

A 2015 FIRST survey found that more than 75 percent of alumni surveyed are either studying or working in a STEM field.

Students not only learn how to design, code and build robots, but how to run their own business and conduct themselves as professionals.

FIRST emphasizes soft skills such as public speaking and teamwork.

FIRST awards students not just for winning robot matches, but for practicing safety and doing community outreach. Students are expected to find their own sponsors, raise their own money, volunteer in the community, help other schools cultivate teams and present their work to officials in the private and public sectors.

Next year, the competition will leave St. Louis after a seven-year run for Detroit and Houston. This week is the last chance for St. Louisans to witness the competition, which is free and open to the public, in their city.

Shake off your afternoon slump with the offbeat or overlooked news of the day.

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World's largest robotics competition comes to St. Louis for final year ... - STLtoday.com

407 teams from across the country are competing, including 18 from Missouri.

Loreto Cruz III, KSDK 8:05 PM. CDT April 27, 2017

Robotics championship at the Dome at America's Center (Photo: KSDK)

ST. LOUIS - The FIRST Robotics Championship is hosting its final international competition of a seven year run in St Louis, but that hasnt stopped a St. Louis all-girls High School from signing up for their first year in the event.

Since 2010; students from countries across the globe spent their school years crafting home-brewed contraptions and thingamabobs that would ultimately find their purpose facing off against competitors at the Dome at Americas Center in St. Louis.

For the final event in St. Louis, fans filled the re-purposed stadium with cheers reflecting the exuberance one would expect at any event held in such a colosseum.

Teams sported colorful costumes, and over-the-top designs for both themselves, and their creations. For St. Louis-based Ursuline Academy student Carley Kates, the thrill of the event and the fulfillment from her months of hard work were persuasive.

It really helped me decide if I wanted to do this with my life or not. Said Kates, after her team won an early afternoon match in the Dome. Im actually in computer programming now, and I really want to go into a field that has programming in it.

2017 is the maiden voyage for Ursulines involvement in the event, but they managed to leave their mark promptly.

They earned the Rookie All-Star Award during the St. Louis Regional FIRST Robotics Competition held at Chaifetz Arena in March.

Its so exciting seeing it in action , because its just all of the hard work you and your team have put into it, and it just makes it a really good experience. Said fellow student Claire Roberson on Thursday. I had already wanted to go into this field, but this definitely broadened my horizons, and made me want to go into it and actually get more experience.

Beginning 25 years ago with a mere 34 teams, the competition now boasts more than 3,400 nationwide. Starting in 2018, the international competition will be split between Houston TX, and Detroit, MI.

St. Louis has been a great host city for our championship, we love it here. said FIRST representative Toby Clark on Thursday, But like the Olympics, we like to move the championship around periodically because that helps spread the message to other communities across the country.

Of the 407 teams participating in the late-April competition, eighteen are from Missouri with five from the metro St. Louis area.

Ursuline is the only all-girls team participating from all of Missouri.

FIRSTs contract with Detroit and Houston is scheduled to last three years.

The company has not decided on host locations, after that.

2017 KSDK-TV

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St. Louis hosting final robotics competition | KSDK.com - KSDK

In 2016, the European Union co-funded 17 new robotics projects from the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for research and innovation. 16 of these resulted from the robotics work programme, and one project resulted from the Societal Challenges part of Horizon 2020. The robotics work programme implements the robotics strategy developed by SPARC, the Public-Private Partnership for Robotics in Europe (see the Strategic Research Agenda).

A wide variety of research and innovation themes are represented in the new projects: from healthcare via transportation, industrial- and logistics robotics to events media production using drones. Some deal with complex safety matters on the frontier where robots meet people, to ensure that no one comes to harm. Others will create a sustainable ecosystem in the robotics community, setting up common platforms supporting robotics development. One project deals exclusively with the potentially radical changes facing society with the rise of new autonomous technologies. The projects are either helping humans in their daily lives at home or at work, collaborating with humans to help them with difficult, strenuous tasks, or taking care of dangerous tasks, reducing the risk to humans.

The research and innovation projects focus on a wide variety of Robotics and Autonomous Systems and capabilities, such as navigation, human-robot interaction, recognition, cognition and handling. Many of these abilities can be transferable to other fields as well.

At the European Robotics Forum 2017, on 22-24 March 2017, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, all projects presented themselves during a dedicated workshop.

Watch the video with all Horizon2020 projects presentations:

Watch the video with FP7 projects results:

Every week, euRobotics will publish a video interview with each project, so that you can find out more about their activities.

We are looking forward to following these new projects and accompanying them to bring benefits to Europes citizens and economy.

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New Horizon 2020 robotics projects 2016 presented at #ERF2017 - Robohub

Sneha Priya and Pranavans venture SP Robotics is providing maker-centric education through AI-assisted learning.

Given their love for practical learning and robots, Sneha Priya and Pranavan, classmates pursuing electrical and electronics engineering, joined hands in 2008 and in their third year kick-started their entrepreneurial journey with SP Robotics.

A few years down the line they took off with Kidobotikz, their e-learning offering focused on maker-centric education for ages 11 and above.

Today, they aim to be the gateway to exploring technologies and showcasing innovations by people of all ages, everywhere.

Sneha may never have attended formal classes on hands-on technologies, but her passion propelled her to do her own research and pester her parents for the things she would need for experiments. From a 15-year-old playing with lights and motors, the Chennai girl graduated to attending College of Engineering, Guindy at Anna University. This #womanintech is the co-founder and CEO of SP Robotics.

Pranavan was born in Sri Lanka but moved to India in 1997 to pursue his studies. At the age of 10, he created a clap-activated light when he realised his family struggled to track a torch during power cuts. Encouragement led him to build morecars, wireless planes, etc. He is the co-founder and CTO of SP Robotics.

Together, Sneha Priya and Pranavan participated in both national and international competitions. Pranavan would take care of the electronics and mechanical aspects, and Sneha would look at the algorithm and programming part. All this gave us a lot of exposure and we wondered why we hadnt started earlier.

Without wasting much time thereafter, they started providing industrial solutions through a small website, SP Robotics. We listed all our projects and were shocked to see so many requirements pouring in for indigenous and cost-effective solutions which were not available in the market. Simultaneously, to create an awareness that robotics tones overall technical skills, we listed over 50 of our products online for students to take up and create their own robots, shares the duo.

After graduating in 2012, the urge to provide education and skills to people led them to start Kidobotikz, an education brand where they would train people from the age of 11 and above. The couple of lakhs they had earned through company activities helped them kick-start it.

With curricula developed in robotics, IoT, image processing, 3D printing, drones, and many more emerging technologies, they started teaching from a centre in Chennai. Their students were mostly college students and corporates who wanted their engineers to be up to date with technology.

We ensured that all this learning was not merely fun but also measurable in terms of skills gained in the fields of electronics, mechanical, programming, and algorithm, thereby helping people understand their strengths and where they need to focus on improving themselves.

Since they could accommodate 150 students and there was a need to scale and increase customer value, they looked at different methods of scaling including the franchise model. They gave out two franchises but shortly backtracked when they spotted the lack of availability of quality technical educators.

Building a strong community of interested individuals proved to be the best approach and they added value by offering more activities such as industrial solutions, competitions, and social projects like Swachh Bot, which received the PMOs appreciation. The most recent winner to emerge from this community is the food-serving robot BOB (Butler O Bistro). Developed by Kidobotikz community members Arjun (13), Anish (12), Srivatsan (13), Varsha (20) and Rajesh Varma (Arjuns father), this robot employs an array of sensors and algorithms to serve food and earlier this month was introduced in Bengalurus VR Mall. Built in two months with the help of

Kidobotikz engineers, it has generated much interest.

Revenue-wise, too, the community turned out to be profitable as it helped increase customer value. Sneha claims that from a revenue of Rs 10 lakh in 2012 with 150 students, they reached Rs 1 crore- in three years with the same number of students.

While the community has held them in good stead, to scale they adopted a model where they designed and developed hardware kits which could be used with the AI-assisted online platform. AI detects poor understanding of conceptsand repeats them in different ways just like a physical teacher. It customises the entire course depending on the way of learning, it gives customised time targets for people to do the practical experiments, it measures the skills gained, it suggests what can be done next says Sneha.

While they were working on this they crossed two milestonesthey tied the knot in 2015 and raised funds in 2016.

Funding came from Indian Angel Network and the Chennai Angels and within three months they had the online platform along with the kits ready for the market. The product was released last June and they received an overwhelming response with over 200 pre-bookings. We are now in the Mauritius, Thailand, and Singapore markets too, proving the scalability of the product. Within just six months of launching the online product, we gained traction of Rs 1 crore and over 1,000 orders, shares the duo.Their team has expanded, too, going from 20 to 50.

There are multiple companies like Lego, Sphero, littleBits, and Makeblock that create educational robotics products. However, these are inclined towards the toys segment and DIY kits. Sneha and Pranavan claim their USP is that they are teaching not just robotics but also emerging technologies.

Our products are open for exploration. People can make mistakes and learnthey are not plug-and-play. And the learning that happens with our product tracks the analytics of skills gained, which hugely differentiates us from the other players, they say.

The company's focus is on the K12 segment (11-17 years) which, according to Sneha, is a $22-billion market worldwide, with Indias contribution being around $2 billion. The duo believes that with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution, the requirement of skill development is at a steep growth with a current CAGR of 18 percent. We are aiming at a $330 billion market in seven years (with our services catering to K12, higher education, and corporate training), says Sneha.

While their core focus is on the B2C model where people can buy directly online from their website or other online/offline partners, they also have B2B models (schools, colleges, small private institutions, corporates) to reach more users and make them aware of such a product.

Going forward, they have a two-pronged approach. On the product side, they plan to release new kits on emerging technologies every quarter, backed by AI-assisted learning online. Plans are also afoot to strengthen the online community with gamification and stronger AI for more interaction and better learning.

On the business side, they are planning their next round of funding so as to increase branding and marketing activities in India as well as increase their presence in a few more APAC regions. We plan to have 2.5 lakh individuals on our platform within two years, says Sneha.

Given their love for technology, to build and to help others learn keeps them going. The interest to see and be part of innovations cropping up in every house due to our product is something that drives us.

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Making learning fun with AI and robots - YourStory.com

Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings @Joe_Zavala99

The Ashland High School robotics team placed 36th out of 67 teams in the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Championships, held April 19-22 in Houston, Texas.

Team 3024, also known as My Favorite Team, finished in 27th place in the robotics competition before it was required to replay a match it had previously won. The resulting tie dropped Team 3024 to 36th in Houston, where 15,000 students ages 6 to 18 converged for an event that was held at the George R. Brown Convention Center, Minute Maid Park and Discovery Green.

My Favorite Team qualified for the FIRST Championships for the first time in program history by winning the Engineering Inspiration award at the Pacific Northwest District Championship for spreading STEM awareness within its local community. Also at districts, held April 6-8 in Cheney, Washington, AHS junior Claire Pryor was named a finalist for the Deans List award and the team won six of 11 matches.

Besides the berth in the FIRST Championships, the Engineering Inspiration award also pocketed for Team 3024 the entire $5,000 entry fee, courtesy of NASA.

Joe Zavala is a reporter for the Ashland Daily Tidings. Reach him at 541-821-0829 or jzavala@dailytidings.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Zavala99.

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Robotics team places 36th in Houston - Ashland Daily Tidings

Published: Fri, April 28, 2017 @ 12:00 a.m.

Neighbors | Abby Slanker.Members of the Canfield Circuit Birds, along with Ohio State Representative John Boccieri (far left) attended a press conference by Representative Boccieri and Representative Michele Lepore-Hagan to highlight the importance of STEM education through FIRST on March 27.

Neighbors | Abby Slanker.After a press conference to highlight the importance of STEM education through FIRST, members of the Canfield Circuit Birds brought out their robot to demonstrate how it shoots large round discs high into the air on March 27.

Neighbors | Abby Slanker.Ohio State Representatives John Boccieri of Poland and Michele Lepore-Hagan of Youngstown had a press conference surrounded by members of the Canfield Circuit Birds, Austintown FalcoTech Robotics Team and Cardinal Mooney Robocards to highlight the importance of STEM education through FIRST on March 27.

Neighbors | Abby Slanker.The Austintown FalcoTech Robotics Team joined Ohio State Representatives John Boccieri and Michele Lepore-Hagan at a press conference to highlight the importance of STEM education through FIRST on March 27.

By ABBY SLANKER

neighbors@vindy.com

Ohio State Representatives John Boccieri of Poland and Michele Lepore-Hagan of Youngstown hosted a press conference to highlight the importance of STEM education through FIRST at Canfield High School on March 27.

Members of the Canfield Circuit Birds, Austintown FalcoTech Robotics Team and Cardinal Mooney Robocards showcased their robots and answered questions. The Canfield Circuit Birds, Austintown FalcoTech and Mooney Robocards were slated to compete in the FIRST, For the Inspiration & Recognition of Science and Technology, Robotics Buckeye Regional competition at the Wolstein Center on the campus of Cleveland State University on March 30.

Representative Boccieri welcomed everyone to the event.

Welcome to the March Madness of Robotics. This is a fantastic opportunity to showcase the best and the brightest in Robotics from the Valley. We wish you all well as you compete at CSU, Boccieri said.

Boccieri gave some history and background of Robotics in the Valley, including that the Austintown FalcoTech Robotics Team was started in 2009 and the Canfield Circuit Birds followed with their team in 2013, with both teams earning several awards at many competitions.

Boccieri then introduced State Representative Lepore-Hagan.

It is so great to see so much excitement in young people interested in robotics and their future. It is so exciting to see so many opportunities open up for these students. Congratulations and know that we support you in your endeavors and good luck at the competition, Lepore-Hagan said.

Boccieri then opened the floor up to the members of the robotics teams.

Robotics teaches us a lot about skills and what we need to know to become an engineer. It also teaches us problem solving skills and teamwork. It also gives us the feel of a professional environment, said Canfield High School junior Elijah Mt. Castle.

Before the teams presented demonstrations of their robots, Boccieri thanked the educators and staff who helped lead these teams.

Thank you to the educators and staff who are leading these teams into competition. You are all Valley leaders in STEM, Boccieri said.

For their demonstrations, the Austintown FalcoTech Robotics Team brought out their robot, which shot T-shirts many feet into the air, and the Canfield Circuit Birds showed off their robot, which shot large round discs high into the air.

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STEM robotics highlighted by state representatives - Youngstown Vindicator