Saturday, April 17, 2010

National Robotics Week: Boston Block Party


Reporting in from Boston, the robot block party was in full swing at the Museum of Science.


Students from WPI brought their prize winning Moonraker 2.0 robot. WPI also has an undergraduate major in robotics engineering that may be of interest to readers.

The FIRST robotics team from Massachusetts Academy of Mathematics and Sciences at WPI sent some of their mentors to show off last years robot while they are in Atlanta.

These robotics bugs are from the Harvard Microrobotics Lab.

They are equipped with a flexible backbone and piezo electric actuation.

More information about their research can be found on their website.


Robonica brought some of the Roboni-i to the party.

No robot block party in Boston is complete with out Roombas.

The iRobot Packbot was also able to make it to the party.

Barrett Technology brought two robot arms. The arms looked very well built and are equipped with a zero backlash cable drive and custom low power electronics that somehow use less then 28 watts.

Students from Olin College brought one of their student projects built on the Lynxmotion hexpod base.

QinetiQ North America brought one of the Talon robots, a successor to the swords platform. It was fortunate that it was unarmed.



Artaic is a Boston based startup with what looks to be a solid business model. Designed to be compatible with standard installation techniques, their robots can produce low cost tile mosaics.

Nao came by the party to show of its dance moves. Fortunately for Nao we did not have any tools with us so we were unable to get any disassembly photos.

There was also a design challenge for building your own bristlebot.


Kiva Systems also gave a presentation on the order fulfillment system.

At talk by Mike Ciaraldi about "Getting Started in Robotics at Any Age". One of the many great presentations at the block party.

We are already looking forward to the next National Robotics Week.

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