Last Friday the Robotiq crew were at the Museum of Civilization in Quebec city to demonstrate their Adaptive Gripper for primary and secondary school robot enthusiasts.
The students were participating in an amicable competition around the theme of: The End of the Mayan World. The organization RECIT MST (for math, science and technology) coordinated the competition which has been held in the Quebec city region since 2006. Challenge organizer Mark Miller noted that this year over 120 students participated forming 35 teams, 12 at the high school and 23 at the elementary school level.
The students were mostly using Lego Mindstorms NXT and technic pieces to build their robots for the challenge. There were two separate competitions based on difficulty level. The challenges were geared to allow the students to design a basic robot which would then need to be adjusted for the specifics of the course provided on the morning of the competition.
During the competition the Adaptive Gripper was available for the students to test out. The Robotiq's team had set up the computer program right along side the Gripper so that the students could view in real-time what movements or actions the Gripper was preforming according to the signals it was receiving from the game controller which the students were activating. The Gripper can be controlled either via the computer program or the game controller, but it was interesting to watch as the kids were drawn to the controller and studied the progress of the Gripper through the changing graphs on the computer program.
These future roboticists were very astute, one young fellow was very wary of putting his fingers into the Gripping area fearful of the strength of the Gripper and had to be convinced that the Grippers safety features would protect his hand from harm. In the end his curiosity got the better of him and he had to try out the protections built into the Gripper so that it stops when it comes into contact with an object, which in this case was his very human hand.
For many of these young robot enthusiasts the Adaptive Gripper was probably the first professional robotic equipment that they have seen and most probably the only professional robotic equipment that they have gotten the chance to interact with directly. It was certainly a valuable experience provided by Robotiq in support of the RECIT MST school program and based on the energy at the museum it is sure that these students robotic interests will grow with them.
For more information on and photos of the competition visit RECIT MST.