Mr. Haecker's Product, Design and Manufacture class attended the RoboPalooza event on Friday, November 15th.
Participants from around the country weathered a blustery desert day on Friday to attend the first-ever RoboPalooza at Peterman Hill, a small peak about 10 miles north of the town of Lucerne Valley.
The Robotics Festival and TelePresence Competition was organized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) “to inspire the youth and public, and to promote robotics for space in general,” said IEEE volunteer Robert P. Mueller, a Senior Technologist and Principal Investigator at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
“Lucerne Valley is an ideal location for testing robots and simulating being on the Moon or Mars,” Mueller said. “For this reason, we have picked a private land site near the Lucerne Valley dry lake bed at Peterman Hill to hold a robotics competition with an associated festival including demonstrations of various robots by leading space companies.”
Some students from Ms. Immel and Mr. Gaetz's LVES class attended the event.
Mr. Mueller invited Lucerne Valley USD Superintendent Peter Livingston to invite teachers to brings students to the event. A small contingent of students from the district were more than glad to accept the invitation. Lucerne Valley Elementary students from Ms. Immel and Mr. Gaeta’s classes were on hand, so was a contingent from Mrs. Eller and Mrs. Lazenby’s Lucerne Valley Virtual Academy classes and Mr. Haecker’s Lucerne Valley Middle High School product design and manufacturing class.
They had the rare opportunity to see representatives from top robotics demonstrate their robots. Organizations attending onsite were representatives from Honeybee Robotics WINE Space Drone, the Venturi Astrolab Flex Rover, Cislune “Break the Ice” ISRU Excavator, University of Alabama Lunabotics Excavator, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, Custom TRAXXAS, Neuro-Space Hiver, and the University of Southern California Quadruped Dog robot.
They met a trio of creators from USC who readily shared information about their creation and let Lucerne Valley Academy student Hunter Reichow test his skills at controlling their robot, “Hector.” Team member Junchao Ma explained that they tried several shoes for the two-legged robot only to discover the toddler-sized Crocs were the best at giving the mechanical creation traction and balance. Their company LASER Robotics currently sells the robot for $25,000, but their goal is to”make it as accessible as possible.”
Hunter Reichow from the LV Virtual Academy tried his hand at a robot with the help of robot team member Junheng Li.
A robotics team from USC displayed some robots including "Hector," a two-legged creation that wears Crocs shoes.
Another robotics team happy to share their knowledge was a team from the University of Alabama. The school’s team has won several robotics championships, and their robot was designed as a lunar lander. Team member already has helped student Ben Gulledge land a job at Space X upon graduation.
There also was a IEEE Telepresence Competition with a $5,000 prize. Competition teams included WARO32 (Western Australia Remote Operations) competing remotely from Perth, Australia, Virginia State University competing from Blacksburg, Virginia, North Dakota University competing from Fargo, North Dakota, Godelius, Inc., competing from Santiago, Chile, University of Alabama and Cal Poly Pomona, both competing onsite, and the University of Adelaide, competing from Adelaide, Australia.
During the Thursday, November 14 meeting of the Lucerne Valley USD’s Board of Trustees, Superintendent Peter Livingston said that the late Alyn Nielsen, who owned Cafe 247 with his wife Kathy, said that someday soon a special robotics event would take place nearby in the desert.
He was right.
“His spirit left this planet in 2023 to travel among the stars in search of adventure, and RoboPalooza honors his memory,” according to the IEEE. Representing Cafe 247 was the rock band Better Than Bad, which has graced the Cafe 247 stage numerous times.
A six-member team from the University of Alabama brought their award-winning lunar lander.
Honeybee Robotics was represented.
Isai's Tacos and the Better Than Bad band was on hand to provide tasty food and entertainment.