On the 27th of April, 2016, LEMUR had the grand opening of its lab and held an open house to showcase its research. The lab saw a number of visitors from curious undergraduates to professors.
Us lab members had the opportunity to present our research to our visitors. The RoCo team demonstrated the gripper that was designed in our interface. We showed both the printing and folding of the gripper and were able to gather a lot of interest. We received some valuable feedback and ideas such as the use for our mechanical design interface in the field of architecture. As we received a wide variety of visitors with different knowledge levels in robotics, it was an interesting challenge to present our research in the appropriate way. It was difficult to present to both extremes of the spectrum: people with zero robotics experience and others that could be considered experts in related fields.
I personally enjoyed learning more about my labmates research. There were some projects that I had not seen in the context of demonstration. It was interesting to learn more about the projects that I'd only get a glimpse of in weekly research meetings.
And now that the lab is officially ready, I'm excited to see it in operation!
Prathyush Katukojwala