On December 14th and 15th, in Ventspils 1. Gymnasium will take place Robot construction seminar, the aim of seminar is to stimulate youth’s interest about engineering and demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of different technical spheres. Within the seminar youth will acquire basic theoretical robot construction, electronic and programming knowledge, and have the opportunity to construct their own sumo-robot. At the end of seminar will be exciting sumo-robot fights, in order to see whose robot is the most powerful. The winner will have an opportunity to participate in Baltic Robotics competitions in Rīga and Tartu in spring 2012.

The seminars are free of charge, and the participants will be provided with all necessary materials and tools.

Participants will also have the opportunity to see unique robot performance that is based on very popular fiery-tail by Brother Grimm. The actors will be Lego Mindstorm robots that are the part of education system in Estonia.

The core elements of robot construction are – mechanics, electronics and programming, these are the “small version” of practical work of engineer. Therefore the youth that have a good knowledge in these spheres will be able to deal with unconventional situations in real life. By the help of robotic activities pupils, students and other interested will gain the theoretical knowledge and also create new ideas and acquire unconventional methods for development of robotics.

As previously mentioned the seminars of robot construction from October 2011 till May 2012 are organised by Riga Technical University in cooperation with University of Tartu. The seminars will take place in ten schools of Latvia and ten Tartu borderland schools and universities. This is one of Latvia – Estonia cross boarder project “ICT DCNet” activities and it is financed by European Union. More information about the project is on home page: www.robotika.lv, in section „ICT DCNet”.

The seminars for Latvian youth are organised by Riga Technical University and activists of Robot Club.

Information prepared by:

Agris Ņikitenko,

associate professor of Riga Technical University

E-mail: nikitenko [dot] agris [at] gmail [dot] com