Australian Ian Thorpe may have been making all the headline news at the Olympics. But a fellow Aussie, Brian Thomas, drew a standing-room-only crowd of middle and high school educators at NIWeek (Aug. 17-19), to talk about another major international competition—for a little bit younger but no less intense set. The teachers listened raptly as he described how the only 10 students in a tiny middle school 100 km inland in the Australian Outback made it all the way to the RoboCup Junior International Competition (http://rbi.ims.ca/3855-549) in Lisbon in July. That's no small feat, given that the program, in which students build robots to compete in a soccer-like tournament, has expanded in just five years to include some 1,000 Australian teams of four to five students each. This year, the Aussies vied with some 20,000 students from 29 countries worldwide, including China, Iran, and the U.S., for a chance at the gold. Some 175 by-invitation-only educators from around the world attended this special event here focusing on ROBOLAB, a robot development kit that combines LEGO bricks and a version of NI's LabVIEW graphical development software (http://rbi.ims.ca/3855-550). Designed to introduce basic engineering concepts to kids of all ages, the wildly popular kit that was first introduced 14 years ago is making its way into classrooms around the world—thanks to events like the RoboCup Junior Competition. Like the U.S., Australia is facing a shortage of engineering graduates to fill technical positions in the future. Thomas sees the competition as a way to expose kids to science and technology in a fun and meaningful way. "For a lot of kids, math and science courses are dull and uninspiring. We're finding RoboCup is turning them around, even getting them thinking about pursuing a degree in engineering."
For 3D printing to make the jump from rapid prototyping to manufacturing, engineers will need to find easier ways to move products from their CAD screens to their printers.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New versions of BASF's Ecovio line are both compostable and designed for either injection molding or thermoforming. These combinations are becoming more common for the single-use bioplastics used in food service and food packaging applications, but are still not widely available.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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