Thank you to everyone who joined us at the IM Fields for our Spring picnic! The rain played a belated April Fools’ joke and threatened us with cloudy skies but thankfully never materialized. TRGS members played games (soccer, volleyball, spikeball, and cornhole), ate food, and grabbed some awesome burnt orange TRGS shirts. See you at the next one!
Join TRGS on February 9th (3:30-4:30 pm in the AHG Seminar Room) for this invited talk by Dr. Elliott Hauser and Dr. Samantha Shorey from Good Systems!
“Loose Threads” is a collaborative conversation that engages participants in imagining and redesigning the systems where technology is embedded. What are the compromises, considered actions and embedded values we impart on the path to automation? How might we hold open the possibility of meaningful work at its edge?
The elimination of human labor underlies many conversations about automation. Yet, every innovation begets new types of work that are constituent of its success. Situated at the human-technology frontier, there are new jobs made possible by automation. Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired, calls these the jobs that “machines dream up.” Here human collaboration and oversight increases, not decreases, in value. Yet, this oversight can come at a grueling cost. Dystopian futures are already present in the seemingly automated places where human hands still assemble the iPhone and human eyes moderate online content. When we look more closely at automated processes, we begin to see both the glimmering and dark future of technology work.
Students enjoyed Kismet Cafe while partaking in various field day activities. The Purple team had a clean sweep, winning 1st place in both sword-fighting and the-tennis-court-is-lava.
Esteemed Post Dog Ruby (from ARTS lab) and her new sibling Doodi (also from ARTS lab) managed to make an appearance, to the delight of the grad students.
This brings the total scores in the Crystal Cup competition to:
White – 94 points (31 for the picnic)
Purple – 114 points (48 for the picnic)
Blue – 72 points (19 for the picnic)
The teams consist of:
White – HeRo, ReNeu, Robin, RPL, SWARM
Purple – AMRL, ARTS, Center for Autonomy, CLeAR, HCRL, MERGe
Blue – CNBI, LARG, LWR, NRG, SAHM
Teams win points for the Crystal Cup through event attendance and participation, such as winning the field day activities.
This year’s robot costume competition was a graveyard smash (*they did the mash–they did the monster mash*). Students dressed their robots in festive outfits and submitted their creations to our esteemed panel of judges (including ME Chair Don Siegal, AHG Facilities Manager Zarko Vukovich, and Robotics Engineer Nikunj Parmar).
The winners are:
1st Place – HeRo Lab’s Da Vinci Research Kit as General Grievous
2nd Place – ARTS Lab’s KUKA Arm as a dragon
3rd Place (Tie) – NRG’s Philbart as the Toy Story Babyface & HCRL’s Unitree Go1 as Moo Deng
People’s Choice Award – HeRo Lab’s Da Vinci Research Kit as General Grievous
Undergraduate Winners – ECLAIR’s UFactory lite 6 as The Addams Family Thing
This brings the total scores in the Crystal Cup competition to:
White – 63 points (38 for Robot Halloween)
Purple – 66 points (43 for Robot Halloween)
Blue – 53 points (45 for Robot Halloween)
The teams consist of:
White – HeRo, ReNeu, Robin, RPL, SWARM
Purple – AMRL, ARTS, Center for Autonomy, CLeAR, HCRL, MERGe
Blue – CNBI, LARG, LWR, NRG, SAHM
Teams win points for the Crystal Cup through event attendance and participation, such as winning the costume competition.
Students from South Labs narrowly defeated students from the North Labs on April 13th. The results for each of the activities are listed below:
Join us next year for another showdown!
TRGS hosted a demo on computer vision for UT’s STEM Girl Day! There were many children (and parents) who came by to learn about the use of computer vision with robots. Participants could hold objects up to a webcam and see if the Python algorithm correctly identified the items.
TRGS got spooky with Trick-or-Treating this Fall. Our treats — candy. The tricks — awesome submissions to the robot costume contest. See y’all next year!
1st Place – How to Pay off Med School Debt by Sheela and Jeff from ARTS (red tube man)
2nd Place – Dobby (Spooky Version) by Diana, Carson, Asha, and Geethika from LWR (ghost)
3rd Place – Mada(nota)gascar by Caleb, Kevin, Ithza, Daniel, and Christina from NRG (giraffe)
