Innovate Labs hosted the Mecha Moves event on Monday, Oct. 13, allowing students to program a robot with a choregraphed dance of their own design. Hosted in room 391 of the School of Business, this event was part of the group’s larger Skillshare initiative, a series of workshops hosted by the lab to highlight different emerging technologies. These events are open to students of all majors and disciplines at UConn, with no previous knowledge in the fields featured necessary for attendance.
“My favorite part about hosting events like this is the fact that we get to teach people about new skills and explain new topics to them that they might never see in classes, or that they’re interested in but might be scared to approach on their own or without some external input from classes or events like us,” said Karan Rana, a fifth-semester management in engineering and manufacturing major that helped host the event.
Following a brief introduction to the lab and its Skillshare Program, the event began with each student receiving a small VEX IQ Robot. These robots each resembled a medium-sized de-shelled RC car, with the exception that they all featured a wide claw at the front for grasping objects, or in this case, mimicking arm movements in a dance. Students were then able to use the VEXcode IQ software to program their desired dance into their robot, even being able to synchronize its movements to a specific song.
Once work on the robots began, the room was immediately filled with clicking and clacking of keys as students began programming their robot’s desired sick moves. Programming the VEX IQ Robots proved intuitive for those attending, as the VEXcode IQ software utilized block-based programming similar in style to The Hour of Code and Scratch. Moreover, specific movements such as traveling back and forth, turning and opening the robot’s front claw were preprogrammed as functions in the software package given to students, allowing them to quickly get to the meat of creating their robot’s dance.
Once the programming finished, students had the chance to use supplies provided by the lab to make an outfit for their robot. A favorite decoration of those hosting the event proved to be one robot with an Optimus Prime portrait and complementary Matrix of Leadership from “Transformers.”
Following that, the robots were let loose upon the lab’s now-dance floor, with the room filled with automatons swaying back and forth, shaking from side to side and rhythmically spinning in circles.
More than just letting students program their favorite moves into a robot, the event provided students with the opportunity to get up close and personal with the field of robotics and explore new skills in a way that is not usually offered in the vast majority of class settings.
“Our hope with these Skillshares is to [help students] develop skills in emerging technologies, including gasping the practical applications of these technologies in the real world through a fun and engaging event,” Rana said.
When asked about future events, fellow event organizer and fifth semester student Vivian Mendoza noted, “We have Programming Flappy Bird and Plotting the Planets, which is using MATLAB.”
She also clarified that the program’s current activities and the final robot dances from this event can be viewed at UConn Innovate’ Instagram and TikTok pages.
“Usually there we post any updates on events [and] some of our campaigns going on,” she said. “Right now, we have month of Discovery going on, which is a month-long campaign where we have a couple of events around career readiness and learning [about] emerging technologies.”