This week marked Freshers Week – the week for new first year students at the University of Auckland to find their way around the University and get vital information about their degrees. Part of it included information about clubs, and the Engineering Faculty hosted a Clubs and Societies Fair in the Engineering Building. With only a week to go until Vex Nationals, AURA set up a demonstration of our robots in the engineering building for new students to come and have a go. A large number of students showed they were interested, and we’re very keen to have as many as possible join!
Also on display were a humanoid robot and one on tracks – both built and programmed by AURA members in their spare time – and another Vex robot developed for a Part II Mechanical Engineering course specifically to teach students how to write programs to interact with real world systems and successfully deal with the uncertainties involved. There was also another bonus to the demonstration: with robots driving continuously for a couple of hours, this was a great test of reliability. We are very happy with the results – now we just have to finish the autonomous programming.
The NZ Vex Nationals competition runs from the 1st to the 3rd of March at the TelstraClear Pacific Events Centre, and we will be competing against teams from Massey University, Glenfield College, and Manukau Institute of Technology. As well as competing, we will be volunteering to help run the high school competition alongside Massey University. For more information, visit the Kiwibots NZ Nationals page.
