3rd November: Prof. David Miller at Vienna Institute of Technology (Technologisches Gewerbemuseum, TGM Abteilung für Informationstechnologie)
What a day for the students of the department of Informatics at the TGM in Vienna. Prof. Miller visits the students in their lessons and gives also a talk about Botball and the way of studying in America.
Two Years ago I met Prof. Miller at a conference in Takamatsu and he introduces me to the Byobot. It is a very small robot which is able to follow the light. So the Idea was born to use this in the electrical lessons as a motivation for the students to learn the basics in electronics. Today, after one year of theoretically education in the subject GETE (which stands for electrical and electronic basics), some Informatics-Students of the TGM would build up their first Robot. And Prof. Miller was already there and built up his own little GETE-Bot.
Prof. Miller and TGM-Students at work
It was amazing to see, how big the motivation of these students was, to build up their robot. And that’s not easy, because the students had to assembly everything of the robot by themselves. For instance, the eyes of the robot were very hard to assemble. The next picture shows a half assembled robot without its body.
Half asssembled GETE-Bot
After two hours of hard work, some students finished their first Robot. Their next steps in their electronically education will be to built up the robot with digital components and finally to use the Botball-Controller to program a robot with artificial intelligence – and hopefully some of them getting a research member in this project.
GETE-Robot
In the afternoon Prof. Miller gives a talk about Botball and the way of studying in America. Nearly 100 students of the TGM and their Teachers listened to this very interesting talk about the usage of Robotics to teach math’s, physics and electronics. Prof. Miller also shows some Videos from Botball-Tournaments, which very where interesting and helps the audience to understand the Botball Program and the aim of the diploma project group around Christoph Krofitsch from the 5BHITS.
Prof. Miller at his talk
The Audience
Then this project group presents their project in the Field of DISBOTICS. So all of the other students as well as David Miller got an insight of what they have achieved until yet and what they would like to do the rest of their final year.
Antonio Prvulovic, Clemens Koza, Christoph Krofitsch and Manuel Parg at their talk
After this session, Prof. Miller joins the project lessons of the 5BHITS and worked together with the students and their Teacher, Mr. Michael Martinides. Now, deep discussions about the Botball tournament and the possibilities within the Botball Program started. The students really used their time with Prof. Miller and asked many things around Botball.
Prof. Miller and the Project Group
One another amazing day in the start-up Week of the DISBOTICS-Project….
DI Mag. Gottfried Koppensteiner
Project Leader
