Community
This page showcases the various community events that our club has participated in ranging from Boy Scout events to hobby shows to academic competitions. The Central Illinois Robotics Club is committed to sharing the excitement of robotics with others and is always seeking opportunities to reach out to the local community. If you know of an upcoming event that would be a good fit for CIRC please contact us and we’ll do our best to attend.
Engineering Day 2017 and CIRC
We had a fun, exciting, and long day at Peoria Riverfront Museum as part of Engineering Day. The event lasted from 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Different organizations, clubs and companies put on interactive displays to expose and excite children about engineering. We brought our line following and maze solving table, sumo ring, 3D printers, and bots to share with people. Quite a few people came by our display in the main lobby to ask questions. The kids got a kick out of watching Mike’s line maze solving bot learning the line maze course and driving the shortest route to the end. The 3D printers got lots of questions. There were lots of questions regarding how to get started.
February 20, 2017 at 6:48 pm | Community, Uncategorized | No comment
CIRC at Engineering Day February 19, 2017
CIRC invites you to come down to the Riverfront Museum in Peoria,IL, for a free day at the museum on Sunday, February 19, 2017. The museum will be hosting Engineering Day all day long, 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Admission is free! Different organizations, groups and companies will be presenting interactive displays. Engineers from the Illinois Valley Branch of ASCE will be running a bridge contest for students from the area. CIRC will be displaying different hobby robotic events and projects that the club is involved in. People will be allowed to tour the museum. This is a great opportunity. We look forward to seeing you there.
February 15, 2017 at 10:31 pm | Community, Uncategorized | No comment
2013 Peoria Riverfront Museum Engineers Day – 2/17/13
The Peoria Riverfront Museum hosted Engineers Day on February 17th and CIRC was on hand to show the local community the exciting world of robotics. In previous year’s this event took place at the Lakeview Museum but has moved to it’s new home at the riverfront. The goal is to get kids excited about engineering and science through hands-on exhibits, informative displays, and fun competitions. CIRC brought the Marble Maze interactive game, Wheel-E, an Afina 3D printer, line follower robots, HEX Bug toys, an Arduino-powered LEGO excavator, and lots of static robot displays. A huge thanks to Mike Dvorsky, Bruce Stott, Peter Campbell, and Brian Oleson for helping with the CIRC display. We look forward to participating in this event again next year!
February 17, 2013 at 1:09 pm | Community | No comment
ASME Osmoces – 10/13/12
CIRC was invited to participate in the 2012 ASME Osmoces event which stands for (Open Source Mechatronics Outreach & Creative Exchange Symposium). This event took place at the IIT Rice Campus in Wheaton, IL and was hosted by the Fox Valley ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) chapter. Club president Dan Toborowski attended the event and brought his Marble Maze, FPV quadcopter, and our RoboMagellan robot Wheel-E. This event was intended to bring together members of the hacker community, individual hobbyists, professional engineers, and educators to share knowledge and ideas about open source technology, robotics, microcontrollers, and more. Several presentations and classes took place through the day focused on topics ranging from 3D printers, Raspberry Pi’s and Arduinos to how to use Kickstarter. By far the most popular presentation however was by the keynote speaker; JPL engineer Steve Collins. Steve is the Cruise Attitude Control System Engineer for the Mars Curiosity Mission. Steve is shown below next to Wheel-E!
CIRC was excited to be included in this event and really enjoyed the opportunity to network with so many interesting people from the local hacker space, robotics, and education community. We look forward to next year’s event!
JPL Engineer Steve Collins with CIRC RoboMagellan Robot Wheel-E 2.1
October 13, 2012 at 7:11 pm | Community | No comment
2012 Lakeview Museum National Engineers Week Event – 2/19/12
The Lakeview Museum hosted their National Engineers Day event on February 19th. This event falls on National Engineers Week and attracts several local engineering organizations and companies. The goal is to get kids excited about engineering and science and CIRC was on hand to demonstrate some exciting robots including various robotic displays, the Marble Maze interactive game, and the “U-Drive-Em” combat robots. We had some trouble attracting visitors to our slightly out-of-the-way room but those who stopped by were very interested in our club and expressed great interest in our upcoming Bot Brawl event.
All of the organizations that participated in this event including CIRC also received a proclamation from the Mayor of Peoria! The proclamations were awarded at the February 14th city council meeting. You can watch video of the meeting here. The National Engineering Week proclamation is about 10 minutes in.
A huge thanks to Len Shelton, Mike Dvorsky, and Bruce Stott for helping with the CIRC display. We look forward to participating in this event again next year at the new Riverfront Museum!
February 19, 2012 at 8:05 pm | Community | 2 comments
2011 iHobby Expo – 10/22/11
Sadly in 2011 we learned that the iHobby Expo would be moving to Ohio starting with their 2012 convention. This meant that 2011 would be the final year that iHobby would take place on Illinois and everyone involved vowed to make sure to do a proper send off with even more robotics displays than ever before. Along with the ChiBots display and CRCA combat competitions, 2011 also saw the addition of Mech Warfare with a top knotch arena. CIRC was also represented with lots of displays including our RoboMagellan robot, Wheel-E. CIRC member Mike Dvorsky walked away with 1st place in racing line following and Curt Boirum took 3rd in the 3lb beetleweight combat event. While the CRCA group discussed the possibility of following iHobby out to Ohio next year ChiBots has already begun looking for a new event they can join for their annual ChiBotica competition in 2012. It will likely be a very long time before Illinois sees so much robotics excitment in one place again. Everyone who has participated in iHobby these past few years will definitely miss the experience.
October 22, 2011 at 9:57 pm | Community | No comment
2011 Boy Scout Jamboree – 9/9/11
The 2011 Illini Boy Scout Jamboree took place on September 9th and was held just South of the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. 3 CIRC members attended this event with a large collection of robot displays. The scouts were very interested in the robots and we received a lot of questions from curious parents and scout masters interested in the new Robotics merit badge recently announced.
September 9, 2011 at 8:36 pm | Community | 2 comments
Transformers 3 Premiere @ RAVE Movie Theater – 4/1/11
CIRC was invited to setup a display at the RAVE Cinemas movie theater as part of the Transformers 3 premiere. This was a terrific opportunity for our club with lots of visitors, a comfortable indoor setting, and great potential for attracting new members from the local community. We had a steady stream of people both days and answered tons of questions mostly related to getting started in robotics as a hobby or learning tool. The theater owner was very impressed by our display and promised to keep CIRC in mind for any other future film releases that tie in directly with our club.
July 1, 2011 at 9:36 pm | Community | No comment
2011 ISU Family Science Day – 4/16/11
The ISU Family Science Day was held on April 16th at Illinois State University. This event was organized by the ISU Center for Mathematics, Science, and Technology or CeMaST. This was one of the largest community events that CIRC has ever participated in and luckily we had several club members to help answer questions and demonstrate the numerous robots we brought with. Our booth included several hands-on activities such as the “U-Drive-Em” combat robots and the Marble Maze game. We also had several magazines and other handouts to give away which were quickly snatched up. This event also attracted several other exciting displays such as a collection of electric vehicles, Segway rides, emergency fire equipment, and fun science experiments.
April 16, 2011 at 8:48 pm | Community | No comment
2011 LakeView Museum National Engineers Day – 2/19/11
The LakeView Museum hosted their National Engineers Day event on February 19th. This event falls on National Engineers Week and attracts several local engineering organizations and companies. The goal is to get kids excited about engineering and science and CIRC was on hand to demonstrate some exciting robots including a ROBOTIS humanoid, several line following robots, and the “U-Drive-Em” combat robots. This event took place in the same room were our monthly meetings are held.
February 19, 2011 at 8:57 pm | Community | 2 comments
