Over 120 guests joined the Sensor City team to take part in HiPy and LivIdea‘s ‘Robots and Code’ workshop, and create smart phone controlled robots.
The event is the first in a series of workshops which will bring together people from a wide range of backgrounds, from absolute beginners to high end experts, to work on technical projects in a friendly, informative environment.
Members of the public and local businesses, alongside students and researchers from the city’s universities, came together as a community to help each other learn python coding and C/C++ computer programming language, as well as electronics, robotics and mechanical engineering. It’s not often you find a physicist, biologist, chemist, student and a member of the public laughing and joking whilst working together to build a smart phone controlled robot.
Fueled by pizza, popcorn and soft drinks, our teams set to work to build their robot racers. The evening culminated in a high-intensity robot race, with the winning team taking home the much-coveted “Sensor City Cup” (an 8-bit styled 10cm high 3D printed trophy).
The event also served as a platform for people to show off their own projects. Highlights included the mini-ROV, a bell which can be controlled by a twitter feed, and a photography drone which was used to take a great picture of the group as they gathered on the Sensor City roof terrace.
Dr John Kenny, electronic innovation industrial technologist at Sensor City, said: “We were delighted to host our very first event with the HiPy and LivIDEA teams this week. The ‘Robots and Code’ workshop was an excellent way to bring the community together with our resident experts, and to showcase the facilities and resources which Sensor City has to offer.
“The feedback and response from attendees has been incredible. We can’t wait to host the next event and we are excited to see how Sensor City can continue to enthuse and engage with our local community.”
Sensor City would like to thank everybody who attended and contributed to such a wonderful evening, especially the many staff at HiPy and LivIdea for providing support, as well as Mouser Electronics for providing the robot kits and electronics.