Mr. Witman
Field Trip to RoMeLa Robotics Lab
On Tuesday, May 1st, Team Curiosity and other robotics students visited the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at UCLA. The lab is a research facility that focuses on humanoid robots and “novel mobile robot locomotion strategies.” The students got to see demos of several exciting robots, including THOR, a full sized humanoid robot that competed in the DARPA Robotics Challenge and also won the 2015 robot soccer tournament known as RoboCup. A student favorite was a robot called DARwIn, which was a miniature humanoid robot platform for research and education. DARwIn stands about 18 inches high, could interact with students, dance, get up when it fell down, and play its own form of robot soccer. Q&A with the UCLA graduate students revealed insights into their design process, explained what is like to work in a research lab, and gave the students inspiration for their future robot creations.