Gentlemen, Start Your Droids
‘Famous for its 500-mile motor race, Indianapolis saw a different kind of motorized competition over the weekend — the Droidyard 500, which pits R2 droid units against one another.
Held at the Star Wars Celebration III convention at the Indiana Convention Center, the race was organized by members of the R2-D2 Builders Club.
Held on the convention floor, the Droidyard 500 pitted a couple of dozen droids against each other. Racing two at a time, the droids trundled 30 yards across the convention floor and back. Several heats were held during the four-day event.
The group, which has devised a set of standardized measurements for rolling R2 units, also hosted an R2 showroom and robot-building workshops for the approximately 30,000 convention attendees.In the Droidyard 500, engineer Jerry Greene entered his R9-D2, which is an R2-D2 with its blue panels dyed orange. It didn’t fare very well in the races.’
Read more at Gentlemen, Start Your Droids
Recent Entries
- Direct Brain Control of Humanoid Robot
- Declining Population to Propel Japanese Robotics Market
- Vietnam to host Asia Pacific students robot contest
- Microsoft unveils public robotics software
- Robots mix cocktails in Vienna
- Robotic Bartenders - Robomoji, Asahi and RoboBar
- Cocktail robots mix mojitos in Vienna
- Hospitals eye prostate surgery robot that some call ‘a toy’
- Troops Test Robotic Stryker
- NASA unveils strategy for return to moon using Robots