Robotics Demonstration Activity Ideas

Technical Robotics Education and Curriculum
1

Hello all! Our team is demoing our robot in front of a crowd of 300. Our presentation also needs to last anywhere from a half hour to 45 minutes. Our team hasn’t done an event on this scale, so we need ideas on how to stretch out our presentation time. We are of course going to talk about F.I.R.S.T. programs, and demoing 2 of our robots to the crowd. We will also be throwing free team shirts into the crowd. The last thing we have planned is the peanut butter and jelly robot activity. For those who are unfamiliar with it, the crowd has to give a “robot” (member of our team) commands on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Everything is taken literally and commands have to be specific.

We doubt this will get us to 30 minutes. We won’t have access to a projector or screen unfortunately.

If anyone has any ideas of crowd activities that we could do, or any other subject to talk about, we are open to suggestions.

Thanks in advance,
The Bullbots

2

What exactly are the demographics of the crowd you’re presenting to? Some activities may have a better impact on kids than adults, for example.

3

+1
Also, where is it? An auditorium, outside, etc?

Though regardless of the audience, a Q&A always works if you need to add an extra 10 or 15 minutes to a presentation.

4

What year are the robots from? If it’s something like 2017 and 2015, it might be difficult to find something too exciting to have the robot in, but if you have robots from 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, etc. your lives will be easier. Can you have crowd interaction? Say, bringing people up on stage to drive the robots?

5

The audience will be mainly kids ages 7-14. We will be using our robots from 2016 and 2017.

6

The 2017 robot is fun to play with fuel if you did so (eg make it rain fuel.)
2016, if you did low-goal, play catch with the younger kids. High goal, play catch.

7

The event will also be inside in an auditorium.

8

If you have more than one robot there, is there any way you could come up with some competition the two robots could go in. This year at a STEM festival we were a part of we and another team brought our 2016 towers and had robots shoot balls at them to see who could get more, for a game like this you wouldn’t need any specific robot or goal just a goal that the robots can shoot into. It is even ok if the robots are not shooting the same balls/objects. A slight modification to this game is where you have robots vs audience members.

side note, always remember safety and be extra cautious if you have audience members on stage. (and I would advise against audience members driving robots)

9

+1

And if you do be sure to speed limit your robot, we have ours drive half to a fourth speed depending on the audience.

10

If your 2017 robot shoots fuel you can have a few kids go up and try to catch the fuel with laundry baskets or something (Warning: maybe dangerous depending on the kids). Or try to use it as a pitching machine if you can shoot at a low enough angle.