Hi CS club,

Are you interested in robotics or robotics control software? Do you think being able to manufacture parts on your desktop is cool?

I am in the process of writing a project proposal for an interdepartmental ES/CS project to build, document, and program a robotic manufacturing system. The initial phase would be for a small group of students to build a kit and write software for it. I'd like to include both additive and subtractive manufacturing (CNC and 3D printing) but we may be limited to one or the other initially. For an example of an additive system see http://www.reprap.org. They are trying to build a machine that can build it's own parts!

My proposal will by the end of this month include the computer science study opportunities that are available to CS students, so there will be some specific problems to work on when the project starts up.

I am working with faculty to identify funding sources, and hopefully next semester we can set up a space and start building and hacking away on a desktop robotic manufacturing system.

This project will be ongoing (hopefully continuing after I depart), so if you think you want to be involved, please email me and let me know what specifically you're interested in so we can stay in touch. We need both CS and ES students who have taken their intro classes by the time they start.

-Daniel Packer