New Members Guide

Welcome new member!

We would like to thank you for your interest and involvement with the Pennsylvania State University Park Robotics Club. The goal of this club, as defined by our Club Constitution and our own general interest is to: provide a forum in which members can learn and build on the topic of Robotics, Autonomous vehicles, or machines. To do this, we provide members access to hardware, software, tutorials, and other resources so that they can involve themselves in a wide range of club projects and competitions.

We have meetings every Wednesday at the Hammond building in room 312 at 7 PM. We send out weekly reminders, generally a day or two before the meeting to remind members of current events in the club. Extra club hours are provided to members for those who need them, such as a week or two before a major competition. You can sign up or leave our mailing lists for more news on our member's tools web page.

Welcome to the Club,

The Pennsylvania State University Robotics Club Executive Team

Projects
The club focuses on two main "tracks" to help students learn from different experiences. The first, Tabletop Robotics, is for those interested, but without any knowledge in robotics, we provide several tutorials managed by the club that are designed to help students build a (free) table-top robot. These robots will be built and programmed at the end of the tutorial seasons (usually half the semester) ready to compete in different types of competitions. In the fall semesters we let students compete in a maze event. In the spring students are involved with the international Firefighting Robot Competition challenge.

For students with past experience, we recommend moving onto the Collegiate Robotics challenges. These are the Mini Grand Challenge and AUVSI IGVC competition. Surf around our site and this wiki to learn more about the different things we do.

Links to Various Resources and Competitions
Robotics Clubs:
 * Penn State Delaware - Engineering Club
 * Penn State Behrend - Robotics Club

Penn State Robotics Programs and Labs:
 * Penn State Abington - Mobile Robotics
 * Networked Robotic Systems Lab

Links to various competitions:
 * International Aerial Robotics Competition
 * Robot Competition FAQ
 * DPRG Robolinks
 * Robot Games
 * FIRST
 * Georgia Tech Mobile Robot Lab
 * Robot Competition Links
 * Robothon
 * Eastern Canadian Robot Games Sumo Rules

Software Tools:
 * Carroll Open Source Software & Tools
 * Player/Stage Download
 * Arduino Resources and Freeduino