Today my science class and a few fifth years went on a trip to the Waterford Institute of Technology to learn about the robots and what they exactly do there. I was almost not going to go because i'm not very interested in technology, but I told myself at the start of the year I would do everything, so I made myself go, I was glad of this decision. The bus journey was just over an hour and a half long and by the time we got there my legs were aching. We first went into a room filled with lots of gadget things and a few robots, it looked very technical. We were introduced to the team there (I was suprised to see one of my brothers friends there who had been in our school before, I almost didn't recognise him) Our group was then split into two and the other group went to a seperate room.
For the first half we were given a lecture on all the robots in the room and about the projects they were working on. They had a very cool robot that could do a rubix cube. He explained how it was all very mathematical also. A lot goes into them that i never even realised. The coolest robot by far though was the virtual presence robot (like the one Sheldon made in 'The big bang theory'), it was connected to a computer with a webcam, and the person at the computer controled it. You could drive it anywhere from the computer and your face showed up on the robot. You could watch, and talk to people form the robot whilst staying in the room in front of the computer. I got to drive it which was fun. They also had a large robot arm that could lift heavy weights which I got to control also. When else would I get the chance to control robots. It was very fun and interesting. They used lego to build the rubix cube robot and they bought a segway machine from smyths toy store to build the virtual presence robot. They said it was way cheaper that way and worked just as good.
Then for the afternoon session we switched places with the other group. We were in a room filled with computers which were connected to little robots with wheels (like toy cars), what we had to do was programme them to move to a certain place. This was easier said than done so I let my friends Hannah do all the programming while I watch, it was like chinese to me. In the end, after getting it wrong a lot, we got the robot to move. It was quite cool because it moved to wherever we placed the red dot. I still don't understand technology, it is amazing. Time seemed to fly by while we were there. The very last thing we did before we left was interact with one of their main robot projects. It was programmed to track your face and count. It was amazing, they said it was taking them quite some time to do.
Overal I was so glad I went on the trip. It was very interesting to see all the robots and I learnt a lot about how difficult it is to build and programme them. I don't think I would be much good at it though so I wont go down that career path. But robots are simply amazing. I admire the effort they put into building them.
On the way home we stopped at McDonalds. I didn't get food there but my friends seemed to enjoy their meals. We had a good laugh and talked about the robots. Everyone seemed to enjoy it a lot. I then fell asleep the rest of the way home because the hour long journey is just too exhausting. My friends aren't very nice whenever someone falls asleep on the buses, but luckily, they know not to mess with me.
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