TEAM DUCT TAPE

Neat piece of robotics news from Science Daily (NASA, GM Take Giant Leap in Robotic Technology)
NASA and General Motors are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries.
Engineers and scientists from NASA and GM worked together through a Space Act Agreement [...]

Our 3rd Law of Robotics: Every correction requires an equal and opposite re-correction!
At least that’s what it seems like sometimes. Nearing the home stretch on robot improvements, team members found some of their improvements necessitate other changes, which they hope to complete on Monday, when they utilize a school holiday for more build time.
When [...]

Hot Shot! Game Results

Winning Alliance

3045 (Alliance Captain) Built And Dangerous (B.A.D.)
1902 Exploding Bacon

Finalist Alliance

1369 (Alliance Captain) Minotaur
3837 Force Applied

Judged Awards

Inspire Award - 1902 Exploding Bacon
Rockwell Collins Innovate Award - 3045 Built And Dangerous (B.A.D.)
PTC Design Award - 2845 Team Duct Tape
Think Award - 1369 Minotaur
Connect Award - 506 Pandara
Motivate Award - 409 [...]

An Invitation from the IEEE Florida West Coast Section:
_________________________
So just how do you feel about robots? Was the last time that you thought about  them back when that Transformers movie came out? Well, it turns out that right  here in the Tampa area we’ve got a lot of robot activities going on.
In the elementary and [...]

iRobot has launched a new robotics education portal at http://ow.ly/pxSn . Two sections: Educational Resources and Cool Stuff, both take you to some pretty cool stuff!
The Educational Resources section serves  iRobot’s committment to “supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education in schools. By using robots, students have fun, teachers get to teach in new [...]

[ September 8, 2009; 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. ] Team Duct Tape will be visiting the University of South Florida’s robotics labs this week, specifically to learn about their work in:

SAE (Automotive)
Rehabilitation Robotics
Industrial Automation Robotics

We can’t think of a more inspiring way to start the new season!

Fun piece, from Science Daily: Robot Learns to Smile and Frown:
ScienceDaily (July 11, 2009) — A hyper-realistic Einstein robot at the University of California, San Diego has learned to smile and make facial expressions through a process of self-guided learning. The UC San Diego researchers used machine learning to “empower” their robot to learn to [...]

Since we’re all about NXTs these days, the Robotic Realm’s news of the new Mindstorms NXT 2.0 is particularly exciting. According to the Robotic Realm, the new kit includes 42 more pieces, a color sensor sensitive to different light intensities (no doubt the “new sensor” alluded to in the new FTC kit of parts list [...]