welcome to IROS2010 website

Not only LEGO Education, National Instruments, Microsoft and DMP Electronics Inc. that are powerful and professional and provide best solution in robotics development, but Academic Domain and Government they cooperate together.

Main goal is to be the most professional and large-scaled robotics activities in Taiwan. There is a rapid expansion in application of robotics education. Robotics education is able to encourage teachers and students to develop their creativity and spirit in exchange of experiences and techniques. For the purpose of encouraging new generations to get more involve in robotics industry also to build up their robot talent in the near future.

When the LEGO Group launched the first generation of LEGO Mindstorms back in 1998, it was a break-through concept in introducing “Education and Robotics” to children aged 10 – 99years.

The concept. The combination of the LEGO building system with sensors, motors and a programmable unit which enable you to add behavior, created a whole new world of creative exploration and execution.

Hard and soft skills. From the very first day the LEGO Group understood that the educational/learning aspect of the Robotics Engineering field is of a unique dimension, which holds the potential to leverage much broader skills and competences next to the obvious science, technology and math skill-sets.

Motivation and Learning. When constructing meaningful things which behave as you want them to, we see a huge build-in motivational factor for students. - and more so for teams of students.

Real world. The fact that you can build models of real world things and processes forces you/ the team to face and deal with real-life challenges building on multi-skills and competences – real problems solved in a real work life context, in a fun way.

Systematic Creativity.At the LEGO Group we study and research the combination of creativity and system – we call it systematic creativity, and we believe that this combination is one of the most important parameters for learning.

“Learning with Robotics” captures and includes all above mentioned aspects, and will intuitively be grasped by students at the age of 6-99years.

Mr. Jens Maibom joined the LEGO Group in 1997, and headed up LEGO Education from 2001 to 2010. Under his leadership LEGO Education developed a strong 21^st century skill-educational profile and gave a strong contribution to the development of Robotics in Education. LEGO Education’s solutions are based on hands-on learning techniques that empower students to enter a dynamic learning process. Students are presented with challenges that encourage them to use their imagination and creativity, develop their problem solving skills and communicate with others.

Mr. Jens Maibom’s personal motivation is caused by the ambition of making a change to education, which is scalable. Thereby enable children in general to be better prepared for life, and likewise give teachers the tools which can engage students. Through strong collaboration with local partners, major educational change programs (elementary and middle school) have been developed and implemented in the United States, leading European countries, Brazil, Peru, Russia and China. During the last couple of years, he has given key-note speeches about creativity and innovation in education to the Singaporean MOE conference on future curriculum development, to the ESHA conference for head teachers and principals from 30 European countries and to the Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. With his new position in the LEGO Foundation, he continues his efforts now with a more specific focus to school systems in less privileged countries. Mr. Jens Maibom is a Wharton alumni and prior to his current role he worked with international marketing, sales and business development for more than 20 years.

Vice President of Marketing

National Instruments

Abstract

From distributed sensor and neutral networks, non-invasive surgical robots, autonomous humanoids and vehicles to educational robotics and robots in our homes - software system design is arguably the most critical element creating a complex robotics system. Ray Almgren, Vice-President of Marketing at National Instruments, will describe the current and future needs of software design for highly complex robotics systems.

Mr. Ray Almgrenleads the marketing activities for National Instruments software and data acquisition products, along with the worldwide academic relations program. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 5000 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. Throughout his 23 year career at NI, he has held positions in applications engineering, marketing, and R&D. Most of his career has been focused on growing the use and adoption of the company’s industry leading software, LabVIEW. He has also pioneered the company’s efforts in engineering education, with a goal of inspiring students to pursue education and careers in technical fields. He has built a worldwide team focused on academic and university relations initiatives, including the adaptation of LabVIEW as the software that powers the LEGO^®MINDSTORMS^® NXT robotics invention system, and the adoption of the NI CompactRIO platform by FIRST Robotics.

Mr. Almgren is the chairman of the FIRST Texas Executive Advisory Board, and a member of the National FIRST Executive Advisory Board. He serves on numerous school of engineering advisory boards, including the University of Texas at Austin, Southern Methodist University, Purdue University, and Tufts University. He was named an Outstanding Young Engineering Graduate of UT Austin in 2004, and in 2005 he was a recipient of the Outstanding Young Texas Exes Award presented by the UT Austin alumni association. He graduated from UT Austin in 1987 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He and his wife, Lisa, reside in Austin, Texas with their three daughters, Sarah, Melissa, and Rebecca.

To promote the development of Taiwan's robot industry, the competition is to inspire students in stimulating more creative ideas about intelligent robotic products. It is intended to promote more cooperative efforts among the industry, the academic and the research institutions through the competition activity . We also hope that through the competition we can cultivate more talents in the robot research and development and support needs for the further exploration of robot industry.

The competition is divided into four themes, namely, Industrial Applications, Dream Realization, Appearance Design, Creative Scenario.

1. Industry Applications Theme aims at encouraging further inspiration in new applications of multi-axis industrial robots.

2. Dream Realization Theme is to encourage students to realize the dream of robot applications through hands on practical demonstration.

3. Appearance Design Theme is to encourage students to design robot products which can take consideration of both aesthetic appearance and practical use while embedding them into our daily life.

4. Creative Scenario Theme encourages students to imagine a variety of possible scenarios for robot applications.

Robotics is integrated science and technology nature. We encourage inter-departmental or inter-institutional team to enter the competition. The industrial practitioners will be invited to serve as referees in addition to the research and development engineers.