On 4 and 5 June Dnipro’s Makarov National Aerospace Educational Center for Youth hosted the all-Ukrainian festival for robotics and innovation, BestRoboFest, organized by Noosphere. Over 3000 spectators of all ages attended BestRoboFest. Visitors participated in classes, watched robot competitions, and attended the lectures held by inventors. During the event, both children and adults enjoyed the outdoor activities, as well as the art and food zones. The guests all dived into this exciting world of technology and fun.
“We all understand that technology has advanced. We have decided to bring together engineers and enthusiasts who are striving to keep up with the world progress in technology.” said Michael Ryabokon, Co-Founder of Noosphere and Co-Founder of Noosphere Engineering School, at the opening ceremony.
The competition program included Scratch, Robo Race, Free Style, Copter Race, and Robo Sumo. 134 competitors took part in the contest. The youngest was just 6 years old, the oldest – 60. Noosphere donated a 30-thousand-hryvnia prize pool for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners for origional robots in the Free Style robot competition. The Dnipropetrovsk National University team won first prize for their Mars Rover. The variety of robots in the Expo area impressed all the guests.
Among the exhibits there were the well-known characters of “Star wars” R2-D2 and BB-8 robots. A demonstration from a robotic mine detector by the Ukrainian security service drew special attention. Visitors were impressed by a number of robots like WALLE (a robot from the Disney cartoon), a robot-artist that helped paint pictures and another that painted eggs, a robot-greenhouse that looks after plants, a robot head that is able to mimic the facial expressions of humans, a robot that sorts garbage, Nao and many others.
The Noosphere Engineering School also demonstrated several of its social projects: the My Police app, that allows civilians to call the police immediately through a one-touch-button app, and ArtOS, software for artillery batteries that help reduce the time interval between selecting a target and firing.
Along with these demonstrations, the Engineering School presented free informative workshops for the guests, including Scratch+Arduino, robotics and 3D printing. The developers shared their experience creating hardware projects at their lectures. They talked about their mistakes and achievements along the way to success. Among the speakers there were Alex Nesterenko (ARTKB), Ivan Chub (iBlazr, Technovator XE), Alena Fedorova (Branto), Andrii Konovalenko (CamTouch), and Evgeny Shcherbina, a finalist of the Nasa Space Apps Challenge.
There were a lot of activities for children at the festival. Young visitors played Twister, constructed model rockets, painted gingerbread houses with icing, recreated the festival logo with a mosaic, colored robots and had their faces painted.
The guests fueled up the food court which was full of cuisine from around the world. This was the first time a family-oriented robotics festival was held in Dnipro and Noosphere is eager to do it again. Next year we expect even more technology enthusiasts showing off their new designs. We believe that technology will continue to be used by the young and old alike, and the tech revolution will solve more and more of the world’s problems.