South Island Short Course Championship 2021

JASI Masters are looking forward to hosting the South Island Short Course Champs on 10/11 September 2021 at Jellie Park. Please come and join us. The meet will be held over three sessions – Friday night, Saturday morning and afternoon.

Para entries are also very welcome for the first time ever. Registration details will be available in early July.

South Island Short Course Championship 2021

Invited Talk At The HumanTech Meetings

I will be giving an invited talk at the HumanTech Meetings on December 2nd. This event will be in English with Polish live translations. You can join the meeting for free. The title of my talk will be “Same same but different”. Here is the abstract:

The idea of robots have inspired humans for generations. The Bank of Asia, for example, had commissioned a building that looks like robot to host its headquarters in Bangkok. This profound interest in creating artificial entities is a blessing and a curse for the study of human-robot interaction. On the one hand it almost guarantees a headline in newspapers, but on the other hand it biases all participants in the study. Still, almost all robots that made it out of the research labs and into the market failed. This talk with try to shine some light on why robots are so (un)popular.

The HumanTech event is focusing on “ARE ROBOTS HUMAN TOO? ABOUT HUMAN-INTELLIGENT MACHINE INTERACTION”.

Not so long ago, robots were the subject of sci-fi movies or production lines in some industries. Nowadays, the use of robots in hospitals, hotels or coffee shops has been gradually increasing. All over the world, cases of robot-related anxiety have been noted. Specialists even talk about robophobia – a strong fear of robots.

During the upcoming event in the HumanTech Meetings series, organized by SWPS University’s HumanTech Center for Social and Technological Innovation, two world-renowned scientists, Professor Christoph Bartneck, University of Canterbury, New Zeland, and Professor Agnieszka Wykowska, the Italian Institute of Technology, in Genoa, Italy, will tell us about their own experience of building difficult relations with robots. The meeting will be hosted by Dr. Konrad Maj.

University of Canterbury Inaugural Conference on Artificial Intelligence

The UC AI Inaugural Conference will take place on 9-10 December 2020.

UC AI is a newly-formed transdisciplinary cluster for artificial intelligence research. UC AI encompasses researchers from UC’s departments and schools of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Mathematics and Statistics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Psychology, Education, the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the New Zealand Human Interface Technology Laboratory.

UC AI’s Inaugural Conference also provides an opportunity to celebrate Ada Lovelace’s birthday on 10 December. Nearly 200 years ago, Lovelace and Charles Babbage wrote the first programs for a universal digital computer.

The conference is free, but if you are planning to come, please register as soon as possible via the website.

If you would like accommodation in a UC Hall of Residence ($60 per night inclusive of GST for a single room), please make your reservation.

New Zealand Record for longest LEGO train track

New Zealand LEGO train track record.

Today we set the New Zealand record for the longest LEGO train track at the University of Canterbury’s library with the help of LUG 4/2. We achieve 230.5 meters, including bridges, tunnels and other features.

I took a 360 panoramic video with my Ricoh Theta camera. You can enjoy the 4K spherical video here:

Photos from the event are available over at Flickr.

LEGO Idea Conference 2018

I was honoured to be invited to the LEGO Idea Conference 2018. It gave me the opportunity to meet with several members of the LEGO group but it also brought me up to speed with what the LEGO Foundation is working on. I talked to Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen and gave him my Unofficial LEGO Color Guide. I met with Jan Beyer and talked about the LAN and their connection to the AFOLs. I also discovered that the LEGO House’s library features my Unofficial LEGO Minifigure Catalog.

My Minifigure Catalog in the LEGO House library
My Minifigure Catalog in the LEGO House library

I also experienced the amazing architecture of the LEGO House. I took many (panoramic) photos of the outside and the inside. The large models, in particular the dinosaurs are amazing:

Dinosaurs

But maybe the most amazing aspect of the LEGO House are its interactive installations. Their RoboLab is just amazing:

And I also enjoyed their agent based city simulation:

What an amazing event.