Spring Robot Games
2002
Until 2002, every year around mid-September, SFRSA
and the Exploratorium hosted Robot Games at
the Exploratorium
The SF
Exploratorium still hosts the Webcast
video archives of these games from 1999 to 2002.
High Schools and Colleges are strongly encouraged to contact SFRSA and build a robot for upcoming competition. Sumo bots, Mindstorms bots, and Aibo performers can all be designed and built within a week or two. Contact David Calkins for more information! Help is available for students and teachers wanting to build robots for this competition.
Robot Games 2001
San Francisco Robotics Society
of America (SFRSA)
Exploratorium Museum of
Science, Art, and Human Perception
A Robotics Event Featuring Sumo Competitions, Dog Races, Maze, Obstacle Course, Terrain Challenge,
Animatronics Entertainment
and
A Robotic Cambrian Explosion of Evolving Biomorphic Explorers
"This year's Robot Games are easily an order of magnitude larger and more robust than anyone can remember...The Exhibits area is greatly expanded with new guests including, for the first time, several NASA Robotics groups. In addition...there are several varieties of new Maze & Obstacle Challenge & many new Demonstrations. Joining the Sumo competition this year is a new competition event, the Robot "Greyhound Dog Races". Beyond the competitions are the Bots themselves - so many rarely, never before and newly seen machines...that the Games this year resemble a Robotic Cambrian Explosion. Among the many evolutionary experiments are several new species of robot that would seem to be candidate "Biomorphic Explorers". SFRSA Mediameister Cliff Thompson & his wife, SFRSA WebBotChick, have the story and video.
CyberArts X 10th Anniversary & YLEM (Artists Using Science & Technology) 20th Anniversary Celebrations, Exhibition, Conference, Webcast, Avatar World Cyberspace Atmosphere Portal & Party
Report
on exhibited 3D/VR tools, NASA Mars Robot VR App & VR Theme Park
September 15-16, 2001
On 9/15-16, 10am-6pm, SFRSA Mediameister Cliff Thompson attended an Exploratorium-hosted McBean Theater webcast of the CyberArts X
& YLEM (Artists Using Science & Technology) Celebrations Conference, which webcast was accompanied by a Virtual Reality Avatar World, & on 9/15, 8pm-12am, a Somarts Cultural Center-hosted Party. A
highlight of the event was the roll-out of several powerful
Virtual Reality tools, one application of which is a Mars Habitat simulation supporting
Robotic Rovers that is slated for potential use
on the NASA Mars 2003 mission. Here is Cliff's report..
Due to the cultural impact of this latest in a long series of
Exploratorium-sponsored events, the report includes an Appendix:
... Tribute to
Physicist
Larry Shaw, Exploratorium Technical Curator.
Stanford
University Graduate Engineering Students Host Bay Area AIBO
Owner Gathering
May 12, 2001
SFRSA
Mediameister Cliff Thompson attended with AIBO K-9 & videotaped this
event. Here is the story, with
pictures & a video clip.
JPL introduced new species of Space-Faring Robots at the Open House
Tech Museum, San Jose, CA
May 9, 2001
SFRSA invited to Tech Museum Robot "ZaZa" Trial Run Evaluation.
SFRSA President David Calkins & "Gibson" featured in Time, Asia
April 30, 2001
Dave and Gibson, Dave's Aibo were featured in a story in TIMEasia,
(see "quote on blackboard" illustration near page top & also where it reads "Dog
Dude...of...O'Reilly's bar...the most famous canine in North Beach...Gibson...a chick
magnet", near page bottom).
SFRSA Club member, UCB Robotics and Intelligent Machines Laboratory Manager, Winthrop Williams, is a featured presenter.
"If it's the Future, Where's My Robot?"
Special Lecture by AI BEAM Roboticist Mark Tilden
April 21, 2001 SFRSA sponsored Mark Tilden, Robotics Physicist, Los Alamos National Laboratory, to gave a public talk...
March 27, 2001
Fuji Soft ABC Inc, sponsor of Japan's Robot
Sumo Competition, brought its robotic action to the Exploratorium,
which webcast the event. To see the webcast archive, on the Exploratorium Robot webpage, click the
"Live at the Exploratorium" or "Real (Player)" icon.
The annual jointly Exploratorium-SFRSA hosted Fuji Soft sponsored Sumo Tournament
also scored a major Chronicle newspaper story & pictures in the
Wednesday, March 28, 2001 edition, entitled "Japanese Sumo Wrestling Becomes High-Tech Fun".
Sony METREON Sony Style
101 Fourth St., San Francisco
For You, AIBO & a Friend. Teach your AIBO to do new tricks, perform on command, even take pictures!
National
Television Network
"TechTV' hosts SFRSA 
March 7, 2001
Screen Savers, a one hour TV
show aired a live Robot Special featured SFRSA members showing off robots...
February 26, 2001
Oakland Robotics Expo features exhibitors from robot clubs including SFRSA & Homebrew.