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Friday, March 23, 2007

Henrik Lunds presentation

Henrik Lund from the University of Southern Denmark is giving a very exciting presentation based on his work with educational and leisure robotics, especially with Lego Mindstorms Robots. He talks about minimalism principles in the design of robots.

Henrik Lund Presentation

Self-reconfigurable robots (a sort of robots made of spheres which can move in different directions adopting different shapes), his work in Africa in the Ilembula Hospital in cooperation with University of Joensuu. the idea was to help people to create their own artefacts for the community using "robotics building blocks". This same concept was applied for obese children in china to motivate them to become more active. The idea is to have the devices on the ground, like a mosaic, so the kids jump on them allowing movements in the game, fostering interaction.

The future is to have this different tiles communicated to each other through wireless communication and how to use those tiles for therapeutic purposes, for instance, for injured people they can measure the pressure of their steps in order to know if he's doing it right or for senior citizens and cognitive games for autistic children.

Finally, he also talked about the leisure use of robots and his collaboration with the artist Funkstar de Luxe

Thursday, March 22, 2007

GameBlocks workshop SciFest Grahamstown



SciFest in Grahamstown South Africa is now on the second day and is visited by thousands of kids every day. The first report will be from a workshop where kids can do some programming without needing any pre-knowledge of computers. The participants so far during the workshop has been in the age 5-14 years. The GameBlocks is developed using cheap and affordable components for a developing context. At present they are used to programme a Lego robot to move forward, backward, left, right or play different tunes. Kids can choose their programming instruction by finding a colourful cube with a symbol representing what the robot should do. The cubes are placed in sequence on a mat that can take up to 8 instructions. Kids are given a small programming challenge and if they manage to instruct the robot according to instructions they will be given a small prize. The workshop allows kids to participate in a research experiment and at the same time have fun and learn some basics of programming. GameBlocks are developed under the leadership of Andrew Smith at Meraka Institute in Pretoria.

The day has arrived!

Yes! Finally the day for Joensuu Scifest has arrived. During three days, March 22, 23 and 24 there will be more than a hundred workshops about science and technology. Joensuu SciFest is a spin-off of the original Sasol SciFest in South Africa. In this blog we will try to make a coverage of this great event as long as the South African event. Stay tuned!