5/22/15: TouchTomorrow at WPI STEM Event

Both my husband and I graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and I am beyond excited to share a wonderful event they will be holding on their campus for families.  On June 13th will be holding the Fourth Annual TouchTomorrow.  This event is a festival of science, technology, and robots!  Plus this event is FREE!

This hands-on family event will have lots of interactive activities from WPI, WGBH and NASA!  There will even be an astronaut there.  Steven Swanson will be there.  You can even take a picture in an astronaut suit.  I will be making sure I do this.  I worked at NASA when I was in college at WPI as an Aerospace Engineering student.  I even met Sally Ride when I worked there.

I am a FIRST Robotics judge so I love anything with robots.  My son and daughter have come to some of the FIRST Competitions and also love playing with robots.  In fact my son took a LEGO Robotics after school class and loved it.

WGBH will create a multimedia experience for the festival, which will feature exhibits for students and STEM enthusiasts of all ages, as well as personal appearances by popular WGBH characters. 

There are so many cool activities that families will be able to participate in that day including:

Help operate a rover at the Be-A-Bot 2.0 exhibit.

Take a photo in a NASA spacesuit.

Play on a model of the lunar floor.

Take a turn with the extravehicular activity (EVA) glove box used by astronauts.

Get “rolled over” by the Roll-Over-Rover.

Learn about spacesuit design through vacuum chamber experiments.

Learn about WPI research on human-robot interaction, surgical robots, inter-vehicular networking, unmanned aerial vehicles, biomechanics, intelligent tutors, and other cutting-edge fields.

See WPI student project work in robotics, renewable energy, assistive technology, game design, architectural engineering, and other areas.

“Kinect” with a NASA virtual robot.

Command the NASA Marcbot.

See a model of the Mars Rover “Curiosity” 

The TouchTomorrow festival is on Saturday, June 13, 2015, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. on the WPI Campus, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, Mass. 

For more information on TouchTomorrow events and activities, including schedules and maps and the Sample Return Robot Challenge, visit www.touchtomorrow.wpi.edu.

Disclosure:  I was provided compensation for this post.  As always all opinions are my own.