For the fourth year in a row, WPI will host TouchTomorrow, a festival of science, technology and robots—a free, hands-on, family-friendly festival, featuring interactive activities that are focused on our scientific and technological future. Exhibits are presented by WPI, NASA, WGBH, and a variety of fun and engaging partners.
WGBH will be the official media partner for the TouchTomorrow Festival of Science, Technology & Robots. WGBH is a national leader in the effort to expand Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education in the classroom and at home. This year, WGBH will create the multimedia WGBH Experience for the festival, which will feature exhibits for students and STEM enthusiasts of all ages, as well as personal appearances by popular WGBH characters.
Among other activities, attendees at TouchTomorrow may:
- Help operate a rover at the Be-A-Bot 2.0 exhibit
- Take a photo in a NASA spacesuit
- Play on a model of the lunar floor
- Take a turn with the extravehicular activity (EVA) glove box used by astronauts
- Get “rolled over” by the Roll-Over-Rover
- Learn about spacesuit design through vacuum chamber experiments
- Learn about WPI research on human-robot interaction, surgical robots, inter-vehicular networking, unmanned aerial vehicles, biomechanics, intelligent tutors, and other cutting-edge fields
- See WPI student project work in robotics, renewable energy, assistive technology, game design, architectural engineering, and other areas
- “Kinect” with a NASA virtual robot
- Command the NASA Marcbot
- See a model of the Mars Rover “Curiosity”
The TouchTomorrow festival follows the NASA-WPI Sample Return Robot (SRR) Challenge, a Centennial Challenge competition. The competition is also in its fourth year, and it calls for teams of roboticists to build, program and demonstrate robots that can locate and retrieve geologic samples from a wide and varied terrain— without human control. Twenty teams from across the United States and abroad are coming to WPI in hopes that their robots will maneuver a difficult course and obtain the cached samples successfully.
When:
Saturday, June 13, 2015, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Where:
WPI Campus, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, Mass.
COST & PARKING:
TouchTomorrow is free to attend. Food and beverage will be available for purchase at various locations across campus.
TouchTomorrow visitors are welcome to park in any of the WPI parking lots or parking garages on the day of the festival. Motorists must obey traffic laws for parking on side streets. There will be ample parking available and is first come, first served.
Want to know more?…Watch highlights from TouchTomorrow 2013:
For more information on TouchTomorrow events and activities, including schedules and maps and the Sample Return Robot Challenge, visit www.touchtomorrow.wpi.edu.
*This post was sponsored by WPI*
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