Outreach

Inspiring students to pursue engineering careers remains a high priority concern among governmental agencies and professional societies. To be successful requires attracting well-prepared students to enter engineering academic programs, preferably with a prioi knowledge of real, “everyday” engineering practice. Exposing younger students to detail-oriented activities based on robotics and controls methodologies represents an approach that can appeal to a broad spectrum of engineering interests.

The SubjuGator team and the Machine Intelligence Laboratory is proud to partner with several organizations in Central Florida to provide insightful outreach programs to our community’s youth. Presented below are a list of the latest outreach programs we have participated in.

Gator Robotics Club

Members of the Machine Intelligence Laboratory recently launched a new Robotics Club at UF. The team has generated a great amount of positive momentum for both our lab and our projects. We have had several meetings with 100+ students (including some very young minds) interested in getting involved.

Robotics Camps

The SubjuGator team members teach a summer robotics camp for local elementary schoool kids at Oak Hall School in Gainesville. The two week long camp teaches students principals of robotics, engineering and programming utilizing Lego Mindstorms.

Local Media Spotlights

On October 4, 2011, members of the SubjuGator team were interviewed live on WCJV ABC TV-20 on the 5:30pm news.  We discussed our project and showed our last three submarines.

Lab Tours / Community Seminars

We regularly conduct laboratory tours and seminars on our work. Specifically of recent, we have provided a laboratory demonstration/tour for 50+ residents of Oak Hammock, UF’s retirement community. Held “Machine Intelligence” seminars for 200+  Rotary Club of Gainesville members at the Paramount Resort & Conference Center and 100+ retired faculty members of The University of Florida (RFUF) at the Harn Museum. SubjuGator has appeared at several UF Alumni events and UF’s Harn

Gator Outreach Program

The SubjuGator team conducts demonstrations/tours of our lab and also discusses engineering department options. Groups are typically students (and their parents) that are interested in attending UF and becoming part of the ECE or MAE department.  This is part of the College of Engineering’s Gator Outreach Program.

Engineering and Science Fair

The SubjuGator team participated in a tabling event at the Engineering and Science Fair, part of National Engineers Week, February 23, 2012.  The fair exposes grade school students to the importance of math, science, and engineering to the real world through exciting interactive displays.  We had both undergraduate and graduate students manning our booth with a host of robots.

Museum Open House

Six students and the most recent SubjuGator 7 attended to the Cade Museum Open House on Saturday, January 28, 2012.  The team was able to meet and interact with members of the board of The Cade Creativity and Invention Museum, which will open in 2015.  Students also talked about the robots in the Machine Intelligence Laboratory at the event to about 100 members of the Gainesville community.

Robotics Fair

The SubjuGator team participated in the Robotics Fair help at the Reitz Union Colonnade, Dec 7, 2011. The fair is part of University of Florida’s Engineer’s Week. Approximately 500 people were able to view the robots at this event, including 4 of our submarines.