Last week, the Robotics Club had yet another successful showing at CMU's Undergraduate Research Symposium, Meeting of the Minds. Two of the club's projects, as well as a couple of individual members took home some great awards this year.

First, congratulations to the Colony project for winning the IBM "Innovation That Matters" Award and also for making it to the finals of the Sigma Xi poster competition. For these awards, Colony members presented on their work of building a diagnostic station for testing and analysing the reliability of their robots.

Also, congrats to RobOrchestra, which won the "STUDIO for Creative Inquiry" Award for the third year in a row. This year, RobOrchestra constructed a bass drum playing robot. Additionally, they developed a new user interface for controlling their robotic instruments. You can see both in action in these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XLYji3QoPE - Bass Drum Robot in testing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJioL5yehS8 - Multi-Instrument Demonstration

Congratulations to Brad Hall for winning this year's Roboclub T-Shirt Design Contest! The winning design is attached.

Also, thanks to everyone else who submitted a design. This year's selection was the best we have seen. We will hang on to your submissions, and they might be considered in subsequent years.

Edit: Congrats to Rich Pantaleo for the design as well. Brad says "it was a team effort."

On Monday Brad and I presented the robotics club and current projects to a Penn State campus in DuBois, PA (power point attached). We got nothing but positive comments and enthusiastic questions afterward, as well as a grant to continue doing what we do best. Thanks to all of robotics club for being awesome! Just as a reminder, you can see a lot of the pictures and movies we presented in the gallery and projects links to the left.

-Austin

Please submit your design for next year's Roboclub T-Shirt to officers@roboticsclub.org by Wenesday, April 22. Your design proposal can be hand-drawn (and scanned) or drawn on a computer. Try to submit it in a reasonable, easily-viewed format. If your design is selected you may be asked to resubmit your design in a format TBD. The winner will receive $50 and a free shirt with their design.

If you have any questions, please direct them to officers@roboticsclub.org.

On Tuesday April 7th NREC will be hosting an open house from 5:00 to 7:30ish
PM and there will be free food.

At this event there will be tours of the facility, talks by Senior Engineers
about NREC robots and free dinner.

It should be a very good event and if you plan to attend please RSVP at
http://www.rec.ri.cmu.edu/night/index.htm

Come out to the UC this Friday night at 9pm for our first social event of the semester:

Rube Goldberg Machines and FREE Ice Cream Sundaes!

Come in teams of 3 (or form them there) and build a Rube Goldberg machine that makes an ice cream sundae. There will be prizes for the best contraptions!

Also, enjoy free ice cream while you are participating or just watching.

In addition to revamping the website, we've created a new system for giving officers feedback on how its doing. Visit www.roboticsclub.org/suggestions to send us comments or suggestions.

Welcome to the new Robotics Club website. We'll be porting over old content and freshening up everything so please bear with us while we make the transition.

Officer Rich Pantaleo made Hexabot for a class in the Robotics Club this semester. Shortly after being posted on the internet, it reached #1 on instructables and has been featured on the front page of Gizmodo. Congratulations to Rich and his success!

Congratulations to the following projects who won the Robotics Club Design Contest:

1st: Air Hockey - $300
2nd: ASME Mars Rover - $200
3rd: Underwater Swarm Bots - $100
Honorable Mention: Mascot Bots

Thanks to all the projects that participated!