Quote:
Originally Posted by Pavan
I was wondering if there was a list somewhere of the robotics organizations in the US. If there isn't could we possibly start one by writing down the organization and what it participates in (including stuff outside of first like Botball...)?
|
Just to be clear, are you asking for information about "robotics organizations" or are you really asking for information about what might be called "robotics education / competition organizations"?
If you are serious about generating a list of the former, then you need to start with groups like the
IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, the
Robotics Industries Association and
Robotics and Remote Systems Division of the
American Nuclear Society. To get a start on this list, you might check the
NASA Internet Robotics Resources Index. This list is severely out of date, but many of the links are still live and the index is a reasonable starting point. If these are the types of resources you are trying to identify, then recognize that few of the "robotics education / competition" programs (including FIRST) have much to do with what might be considered hard-core robotics technology. They probably don't belong on this list.
Conversely, if you really want to just focus on the "robotics education / competition organizations" then I would strongly recommend two things:
1) recognize that the community is MUCH larger than just FIRST. To be brutally honest about it, FIRST is still a minority player in that community, one among many. So you have to be willing to put aside any mis-perceptions of FIRST global dominance, and actively seek out the other programs that exist (and in some cases, have existed for much longer than FIRST). And,
2) I would suggest that you start by going through all the presentations from the
2007 AAAI Spring Symposium. This symposium of the
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence focused on robotics competitions in artificial intellgence and computer science education. The presentations list many (but certainly not all) of the competition robotics programs that are linked to various education activities. This will be a great starting resource for your list.
-dave