TEAM DUCT TAPE

[ August 28, 2010; 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm. ] Hard to believe the new season kicks off in just a couple of weeks!  The summer just flew by; it seemed we were doing something every month since our return from Atlanta in April.

Wait!  We WERE doing something every month since our return for the World Championship in April!  There was:

IEEE-Robotics and Automation Society [...]

Team Duct Tape with Robrady Engineers
Team Duct Tape members enjoyed a remarkable afternoon at Robrady Design on Friday.   Lead Graphic Designer Dave Prager kicked off our tour with a look at the many aspects of Robrady product development, from inception to modeling and prototyping.   Senior Industrial Designer Erik Holmen gave us a look at graphic [...]

[ August 20, 2010; 11:00 am to 3:00 pm. ] [caption id="attachment_2133" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="TDT members checking out Robrady's revolutionary bike"][/caption]

Team Duct Tape members are heading south to Sarasota on Friday, to visit Robrady, a product design and development studio that “combines progressive industrial design, mechanical design, graphics / packaging design, rapid prototyping, and production program management to deliver profitable product solutions for our multinational client [...]

We wrapped up our LEGO Robotics camp at the Bob Sierra YMCA with an exhibition event for campers’ families.  Campers’ LEGO
TDT members, enjoying the calm before the robot storm
 art, rubberband cars, LEGO robots and more were on display. Families learned more about FIRST, while they watched campers’ robot runs, and campers got to try out our [...]

It rained most of the morning so ALL the campers, from ALL the camps were indoors, one of our classrooms was flooded when a cooler was allowed to drain in the room, the other classroom had to be used by another camp group for more than an hour, and we had to resort to duct [...]

 While our LEGO engineering campers are waiting for their parents, we usually let them play with the LEGOs. Yesterday, one of the campers made the interesting device at left, complete with a sensor, a free-swinging pendulum and claws at the top. He’s only about 8,  and knew nothing of the Univ. of Utah’s ROCR robot that we recently shared a story [...]

It Works!

It’s no easy task trying to teach thirty kids ages 6-11 robotics basics in the frenetic environment of a full blown YMCA summer camp, with other campers regularly tramping through classrooms from the swimming pool, indoor or outdoor sports programs or simply on their way from one area of the building to another. The Bob Sierra YMCA [...]

All those competitions dancing to the Village People’s “YMCA”, and we’re finally there - well, at the Bob Sierra YMCA, at any rate.  No dancing, but lots of LEGOs, programming, building and teamwork games.   Logistics are a little challenging — hundreds of kids there, in all sorts of summer camp programs, and our classrooms are [...]