Robotics Society

The Aber Robotics Society is a small society of friends at Aberystwyth university who meet up every wednesday in the main physics laboratory to form groups and work on their robotics projects together, a key aspect of the society was mutual support and impromptu tutorial sessions as and when the need arose, students teaching students skills from their own unique backgrounds. The society originated as an offshoot of the Aberystwyth Robotics Club, an outreach program put on by members of the university to encourage kids into STEM through robotics projects, before COVID the two groups where scheduled one after another, and university students who wanted to get involved with outreach activities would stick around for both sessions. Before going in detail on my experiences with the society, I would be remiss if I did not mention the overwhelming support of the university, in particular Steve Faern (head lab technician) and David Lewis for giving us their time, experience and most importantly supervision and use of the physics laboratory as well as a room to store our society equipment and projects.

First year

During my first year at the society, I made friends at the club and developed my electronics and programming skills by first building one of the magician chassis robot kits the society had for new members, and later by prototyping a robotic control glove that used strain gauges to related to motor angles to control a robotic hand. At the end of the year I wanted to further my skill set and give back to the society so I stood for and won the position of secretary.

Secretary

During my time as secretary I was in charge of organizing communication between the committee and other groups such as the students union, members of the society and for arranging and booking the laboratory for our main weekly sessions. During this time I also further developed my robotics skills by retrofitting a toy car, replacing its electronics with an arduino and bluetooth module, compatible motor controllers and lipo battery with charging circuity, all of which made the car controllably remotely. Unfortunately this was the year the COVID outbreak began, I had already been eyeing the role of president before Covid began and so I stood for the role of president with the aim of stewarding the society and its membership through lockdown.

Covid and Presidency

During my first year as president, the world at large was still solidly in lockdown, so we did our best to maintain a continuity of activities by assembling and distributing kits for new members to practice robotics at home, and arranging a discord server with scheduled support sessions for more experienced members to help while also hosting semi regular online social events to try to maintain the social cohesion gained by working together in the lab. In my second year as president I was working outside the university doing a year in industry at Ystumtec however I was fortunate to still be based in Aberystwyth. Fortunately for the society, lockdown rules were being reduced and we were able to resume our in person sessions in the lab albeit in a reduced capacity, having to maintain social distancing which forced us to reduce society membership and ensure tools were sterilized or bring our own from home. In lab sessions my role as president mainly involved providing technical support and being an encouraging sounding board for students project ideas, a role I was already familiar with from my time helping at the PAWB summer school.

Post Covid Revival

During my final year of university COVID restrictions began to fully lift and the society could be revived in ernest, aside from myself we had a fresh committee (all others having graduated) so we had some fresh enthusiasm to get us moving. Aside from our usual activities of allowing students space and equipment to work on their own projects we held a theme for the year "Robot Wars" where students would take the basic robot kit all freshers got to work with, to modify and program them to fight each other in a sumo ring. We also held biweekly talks by members of the faculty and local industry partners (Ystumtec) on their areas of expertise and research. Overall I'm happy to say I had a fantastic experience with the robotics society, it was a space for me to make friends, expand on my skills both technical and organizational and to work on interesting projects. I even managed to pull together enough students to form a committee to keep things going after I left and the society continues to chug along happily today.

Science week and beach lab

In addition to the societies typical weekly activities, the two big events of the year are national science week and beach lab. For science week the university puts on a big event for all the local secondary schools where various groups in the university run tables teaching young students about their area of research from biology to astronomy, and the robotics society is no different, we typically will have student projects on display and a few robots for attendees to drive around to help keep them engaged along with a scale model of the mars surface and 1:1 scale replica of the mars curiosity rover that Steve Faern built. Beach lab is a fairly similar event where local companies and individuals exhibit their work alongside university robotics research groups, except that it's typically held in the bandstand on the seafront in Aberystwyth with the exhibition being open to all members of the public.