Share the Robot Love! Toyota's violin playing bot and the GM FIRST Robot Challenge
I'm a fan of robots. As such, two things caught my attention recently -- one far from home and one very near. First, on Thursday Toyota unveiled a white, 5 foot tall, violin playing robot that bowed with its right arm and pressed strings with its left. Perhaps the performance lacked "soul", but it was far better than I could do!
Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe said he expects robots to be a major business for Toyota in the future. Perhaps a little surprising, but it makes sense if you think about it -- for one thing, Toyota uses robots in the automotive assembly process. More importantly, Toyota has always been an engineering and manufacturing firm, and started out as a loom company (that's loom, as in weaving). In fact, Toyoda (as it was spelled back then) had already been in the loom business for more than 40 years when the "Automobile Department" was formed as part of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Ltd.
Physorg.com has more on the violin playing robot here.
Also, last week I learned of a robotics competition that GM is sponsoring, and that students at the Golightly Academy of IT are entering. If you're not familiar with Golightly, it's affiliated with two more well-known organizations you might be familiar with: Detroit Public Schools (DPS) and the National Academies Foundation (NAF). High School students accepted at the Golightly Academy of IT spend half their day following a "traditional" curriculum and half their day learning professional IT skills based on a NAF-sponsored IT curriculum. The program is hugely successful with graduation rates of 90%, and 80% of students going on to college.
The Golightly Academy of IT is looking for some help with their robotics team. If there are any folks out there who love robots, and also love helping kids discover the power and beauty of technology, please reach out to me through this blog. I'll then put you in touch with the faculty at the academy who can give you more details. :-)
The Academy is specifically looking for someone who knows how to develop in C and would like to mentor a team of high school students. The time commitment is somewhat flexible, but not more than a couple hours per week. Ideally, they're looking for someone who would be available most weeks between January - April. Meetings are either at Golightly Academy of IT or the GM Tech Center in Warren, MI.
I look forward to hearing from you all -- let the rush begin!!! :-)
John Mullinax is a Platform Strategy Advisor with Microsoft's DPE Team. Before joining Microsoft in 2006, John held a vartiety of positions at Ford Motor Company, most recently leading IT services strategy to support explosive business growth in China. Other positions included: Enterprise Architect, Application Portfolio Management, Technology Governance, and Product Manager. Prior to joining Ford, John earned his MBA at the University of Washington. Before that, he was Director of Elections for Douglas County, Washington, where he conducted the first Federal mail-ballot election in the USA. Subsequently, he joined the Secretary of State's office as a consultant working with county election officials in Washington state to improve operational effectiveness, integrity, and security (aka, to prevent the kind of debacle we saw in Florida in 2000).
