The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)
Issue link: http://wpialumnimag.epubxp.com/i/406282
W Fall 2014 13 stem power Just Add Kids The future takes fight with TouchTomorrow hat happens when you mix kids, robots, and space exploration in the futuristic atmosphere of WPI's out-of-this- world learning environment? Excitement ignited the third annual Touch- Tomorrow festival. On June 14, the free, inter- active festival celebrated the wonder of STEM with hands-on exhibits and activities ranging from extracting the DNA of a strawberry, to launching paper airplanes, to piloting a space rover on the moon. The festival followed on the heels of the three-day NASA-WPI Sample Return Robot Challenge, an international competition to build and program robots that can locate and retrieve geologic samples from the terrain of other worlds—without human control. Thousands of TouchTomorrow participants took part in outdoor and indoor activities sponsored by groups such as NASA, WGBH Education, EcoTarium, Science from Scien- tists, FIRST Robotics, Worcester Historical Mu- seum, Discovery Museum, iRobot, David Clark Co, and National Grid. Astronaut Bernard Harris spoke about his experiences in space, while kids got to snap a selfe in a spacesuit and engage in deeper learning about spacesuit design through experiments with vacuum chamber tubes. There were photo ops with WARNER (WPI's Atlas Robot for Nonconven- tional Emergency Response), a 6'2" humanoid robot, and presentations on WPI's cutting- edge research on human-robot interaction. Best of all, budding scientists (and their par- ents) were exposed to the best of WPI's student and faculty research, with the entire campus turned into a learning lab bursting with in- door and outdoor activities and demonstra- tions. Participants had a chance to navigate a semi-autonomous wheelchair with voice com- mands, and try on a Smart Robotic Prosthetic Hand. They were able to pilot student games in the IMGD lab, and build a dye-sensitized solar cell that runs on raspberry juice and titanium dioxide. At the end of the day—in addition to a personalized souvenir they machined with a laser cutter—they took home stellar memories and an expanded vision of the future and how they could shape it. W π quotable "Without my WPI background, I would have been limited in even knowing what I didn't know." —Novelist Gary Goshgarian '64, on researching the science and technology behind his award-winning thrillers