Hey Derrick,


> How do you see this technology being implemented in our event? In other words, how does this project fit in with our event
> specifically?

Since Idea Hacks is fundamentally a hardware hackathon, we felt giving participants the opportunity to build robots would foster innovation and increase the diversity of projects created there. Even though robotics is a field in engineering with almost unlimited potential for creativity, this vein has remained largely untapped at hackathons due to the amount of time and effort required to create a robot using traditional methods.

Our system speeds up the production cycle of a robot both by making the code faster to write and more immune to syntax errors and by making the body of the robot incredibly easy to construct. Writing code involves dragging and dropping graphical blocks onto a workspace and building the body is essentially origami.

Printable robots are suited for the fast paced environment at a hackathon precisely because writing the code is so simple and the cost of building them is so low. If a team messes up when designing the body and the wire frame generated turns out to be wrong, they can quickly edit the design on the computer and print out another wire frame. There is no real setback to making mistakes.


> Our theme this year is sports technology, how can this technology be implemented in terms of a hackathon?

Since our technology is a tool, it can be used to make robots specific to any number of applications. Off the top of my head, these are a couple of sports related robots that participants can create. The possibilities of what can be accomplished using this system is limited only by your creativity.

- Robots that help time and train runners,
- Robots that retrieve tennis balls


> How long does it take to program such a printable robot, given the time crunch of a 36-hour hackathon?

The time required to program the robot obviously depends on the desired complexity of the final product. Designing the body is extremely easy as well. It's similar to lego in a 3d web interface. Overall, the time it takes to build a robot is very suitable for the hackathon.



> You have told us what this technology does, so help me understand why you chose IDEA Hacks to debut your technology
> and not another event or platform

Part of LEMUR's mission statement is to increase the ubiquity of robots in everyday life. By releasing the technology at IDEA Hacks, we have the opportunity to see how effective our system is in achieving this goal. When people use the product, we will get diagnostic information that will tell us what changes we need to make in order to improve the system.

Sincerely,

Gopi


On Thu, Oct 20, 2016 at 6:41 PM, Derrick Benson <derrickjbens@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Gopi,

My name is Derrick Benson, one of the chief organizers for IDEA Hacks this upcoming year. These printable robots LEMUR is working on sounds great, but I have a few questions regarding this project and IDEA Hacks:

How do you see this technology being implemented in our event? In other words, how does this project fit in with our event specifically?

Our theme this year is sports technology, how can this technology be implemented in terms of a hackathon?

How long does it take to program such a printable robot, given the time crunch of a 36-hour hackathon?

You have told us what this technology does, so help me understand why you chose IDEA Hacks to debut your technology and not another event or platform so we can consider it. Thanks.

Best,
Derrick Benson
(760) 585-5342
derrickjbens@gmail.com
B.S. Mechanical Engineering: UCLA 2018