Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

Hackathon at Universcience

On march 22th & 23th 2014, UniverSciences (Paris museum of sciences and technologies) organized a hackathon for the general public around the assembly of a Poppy robot. It involved 15 robotic enthusiasts, from children to adults. Participants were dispatched around several workshops during the two days. While a group was dedicated to the actual assembly of the different Poppy parts, others were exploring how to program the robot with the Python software or working on designing and 3D printing hardware improvements. Aside the workshops around Poppy, several presentations and conferences about robotics were set-up. In this context, participants are not only spectators of a scientific mediation act but also actors.

In two days, this group of new users, self-trained using online documentation have been able to build from scratch the whole robot and make it move using the Pypot library. They even designed a new original semi-passive solution for the ankle joint, as well as a robot helmet which was 3D printed and assembled within the time of the workshop. This experiment did not only show that the platform was easily usable in an educational context with users of all ages, and was rebuildable in two days by a little group, but it also showed high educational value as testified by users and educators (see https://forum.poppy-project.org/t/poppy-project-at-la-cite-des-sciences-et-de-lindustrie/ )