On Saturday, October 20th, iRobotics hosted its first Robot Day in collaboration with the Orpheum Children’s Science Museum to inspire, engage, and educate children of all ages through the exploration of the sciences. Robot Day involved multiple engineering societies from the university as well as a local FIRST FRC team. We were able to fill the auditorium with Baja, Illinois Space Society, MRDC committee, Solar Car, FSAE, Ctrl-Z, and iRobotics. Each society brought a fun and engaging demonstrative or hands-on activities, so the children were able to interact with cars, robots, rockets, rovers, 3D printer, battlebots, and much more!
The focal point of the event was our 1 lb 3D printed battlebot competition, Design Print Destroy. We had a total of 13 bots compete with everything from horizontal spinners to a crusher bot with soldering iron arms to a vibrating bot that drove on toothbrushes. The participants included first-time robot builders, past competition champions, and UIUC alumni.
With over 400 people coming through during the event to see all of the different activities and booths, we were able to create a fun day in which we can expose the community to engineering and robotics! We hope to make this event bigger and better next year!!!