A few months ago, a particularly entertaining story about a Roomba that accidentally spread dog poop all around a family’s home circulated around the internet.  Lately, you can find entire forums dedicated to robot fails and entertain yourself for hours with gifs of robots doing something obviously wrong and therefore hilarious.  From stories and clips like these, one may rightly draw the conclusion that robots just aren’t smart enough yet to realize the nightmares of Elon Musk or Stephen Hawking.  However, that day may still come.  Robotics as a field of engineering is rapidly taking off, and students with experience through FIRST or VEX programs already have a great head-start in the field.

Happy New Year everyone!  Each new year invites us to simultaneously reflect on the past, while looking ahead and planning for the future.   There have been many exciting changes at RIM recently, and many more that will occur over the next few years, and today I'd like to highlight a few of our past successes and share with you a look at our future.

FRC Team 133 (BERT) entered the Rockwell Automation video contest called Engineering Our Future: Next-Generation Innovators Envision a Brighter Future! Now they need your vote! Their video is on page 6 of the submissions, just look for the green & white logo! People can vote every 24 hours through 11/29, so get busy voting!

http://www.rockwellautomation.com/rockwellautomation/news/110-anniversary/engineering-our-future.page?


And good luck Bonny Eagle Robotics Team! You make Maine proud!

What a day for robotics in Maine! Although the weather definitely didn't cooperate with us, as all good engineers would do, we problem-solved a new (and perhaps better!) solution. Dean Kamen was scheduled to land his helicopter, and then his airplane, but both modes of transportation were halted because of the low fog ceiling. But thanks to some dedicated Mainers (and we will always consider Ryan Foley a Mainer) at FIRST, weather was not going to stop them from delivering Dean to us! And amazingly enough, the Governor and Dean arrived at just about the same time!

Special thanks to all our sponsors, Fairchild Semiconductor and Texas Instruments, as well as our Board of Directors and public relations staff for making this event so amazing! Thanks for the Manufacturers Association for all of their support! And, of course, this organization would not exist without the hundreds of dedicated students and parents who love to show their robots and talk about their experiences! It was a successful day all around!