There were several new students here tonight. They had a few demonstrations to explain what they are all about. The first demonstration was about CAD (Computer Aided Design). Basically, it was about designing parts to use on the robot. The coolest part was that you can actually print your pieces using a 3-D printer. Next, we talked about animation. Animation is separate from designing the robot (CAD) instead you make a minute-long cartoon. Programming is (in my opinion) the hardest of them all. From what I understand, programming is telling the robot what to do. Hearing about LabView for the first time was confusing. LabView is the program used to make programs for the robot.
Coming in and seeing what the robots actually looked like was surprising. While I was expecting to see a trim little model completely encased in metal, the real robots had wires all the over the place, plastic parts and steel frames. It looked cool, but not what I was expecting. I can't wait to see a robot actually work and move!
~ A Student Visitor