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Annika O’Brien Plays with Giant Robots

Annika O’Brien Plays with Giant Robots

Annika O’Brien works full time making cool robots. She also founded the popular LA Robotics Club, which has over 1,200 members including high school students, hobbyists and professionals who share an interest in building robots. The club meets in real space to work on projects and participate in presentations, as well as holding classes as part of their community outreach to under-served teens.

Annika’s boundless enthusiasm and outspoken demeanor jumped right through the screen at me as we met via video chat to discuss her experience on SyFy’s ground breaking show, Robot Combat League, where teams control giant humanoid robots duking it out in an arena.

“It’s like WWE wrestling with robots. It was a concept that no one had actually done before,” she said. “It was a helluva lot of fun.”

Continue Reading Andrew Terranova
HYREL 3D Printers

HYREL 3D Printers

Daniel Hutchinson of Alpharetta, GA, is the front man for Atlanta-based HYREL 3D, a startup launched in November through a highly successful Kickstarter campaign. The idea behind their HighlY-RELiable 3D printer design is to provide an open-platform fused-filament system that does not cost as much as “industrial” machines, but requires less assembly and maintenance time than kit-based machines.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan
FirstLight: The Story of a Telescope

FirstLight: The Story of a Telescope

Oakland resident Douglas Smith is an architect by training, working as a BIM / CAD manager at the San Francisco offices of internationally-renowned skyscraper architects Skidmore Owings & Merrill. In 2006, co-worker and amateur astronomer David Frey persuaded him to take an amateur telescope-making class at The Randall Museum, taught by famous amateur astronomer John Dobson. It changed his life.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan10