pic: Little Ones Drive

[ColleenShaver]

About 3-4 years ago, our team advisor sent out some letters to area schools and groups offering for us to come and do robot demonstrations for them. This caught on like crazy. Now, each year we do 50-60 demonstrations throughout New England and get more and more calls all the time as news spreads through word of mouth.

We do demos on-campus at WPI for various groups (this week is was a SWE sponsored Girl Scout event and a Minority Affairs office "Kids to College" program) as well as, and more often, travel to schools, libraries, churches, etc to do events. Recently, we were even the main attraction of a 7-year-old's birthday party down at Subway (one of our Food Sponsors).

I'd recommend contacting area schools and libraries and tell them your willing to bring the robot and students to talk about robotics, engineering, being a student, whatever! Give them your contact info and tell them to spread the word!

We hold demos for pretty much any size audience and usually for about 45 minutes - 1.5 hours. We do a bit at the beginning talking about engineering, robotics, etc at an age appropriate level and then entertain questions from the audience. Anyone who asks a question is invited to come drive/operate the robot and we create little challenges for them to do.

It's tons of fun and a great experience for team members as well as the audience. If you have any other questions or things we could help with, just ask!