First Meeting Topics

Without getting too specific and giving out all my secrets, here's what you can expect to see at our first meeting. Understand that for this first meeting it's super general, so digging into any particular topic.

• Introductions
  What do you love about Robotics?

Of course introductions will be necessary. We're not all from the same following, and we all like robotics for different reasons. It would be great if each of us understood who we could talk to about our interests.

• Robotics: A multi-disciplinary Science
  What is Robotics? What components make up robotics?

By embracing our interests, let's discuss what exactly makes up robotics. You'd be surprised at the number of different studies and sciences that can make up a single robotics project. I hope you can find new interests that maybe you didn't associate with robotics before.

• Business as usual
  When's the next meeting? What are we going to talk about?

I understand that Tuesday at noon might be a really bad time for you. Let's establish a new time that works for everybody. Also, from our list of disciplines, let's decide what we want to talk more about next time we meet.

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I hope to have this all covered by 12:30 pm. At this point I'll let anyone go who doesn't want to learn more about ROS and programming robots. Here's what we'll have to offer for the people who stay:

• Working with LinuxWhat is Linux? Why would you ever want to use it?

The way Berea operates, you've most likely used only windows on your student laptop. You've maybe thought about other OS's, tried them out on machines across campus, but haven't really got to spend anytime with them. 

You may not be aware, but Linux is a powerful tool for programmers, and you may even find it more inviting than Windows! At the same time there also exists this strange fandom around Linux, which makes it seem perhaps a little too difficult or off-putting. We're going to talk about Linux realistically, with it's advantages and disadvantages, and ways you can get your machine to use a Linux Operating System. There are a lot of difficult questions when it comes to Linux, but I'll try to make everyone feel a little bit better. 

• ROS, the Robotic Operating System
  How do people just 'use' robotic systems? How do they code for them?

No doubt during your programming courses, you've asked yourself "How do people even get to the point where they're working with these giant systems?", and, surprisingly, the answer is much closer than you think. Again, it seems like there's a high wall, but once you. And don't worry, we won't be going through all of ROS, not even by a long shot. We'll be talking about it on a totally conceptual level: What we want from robots, and how we can achieve that. 

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Again, the point of these technical parts is not to show you how much I know about these things, but help make them a little less frightening and more accessible to you.

I hope to see you there! Again, feel free to send any questions to BereaRoboticsSociety@gmail.com