Our experience at the SciFest 2025 in Uppsala
Post's content provided by: CPS-Lab Team
Overview
We participated with the CPS-Lab at the SciFest 2025 in Uppsala. SciFest is a science festival with a wide range
of workshops, shows, competitions, research meetings and lectures. The programme is broad, covering the humanities,
social sciences, natural sciences and medicine. During a walk at SciFest, you can go from digging fossils to programming
Lego robots, then on to looking for spruce bark beetles and making your own historical exhibition. The air is filled with
joy and energy as it pops, bubbles and moves! From 2020 onwards, SciFest is co-organised by Uppsala University and the
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Most of the exhibitors at SciFest come from the two universities in Uppsala,
but there are also authorities, companies, museums and organisations (Information provided from their
own website).
This was our first appearance as a Lab for this festival, but several members have been participating with other Labs
and/or research groups. We participated during the whole duration of the SciFest, from Thursday to Saturday. In the first
two days, schools from and around the city were the first ones to experience what we prepared for this year.
We only had drop-in activities this year (maybe in the following ones we can prepare some workshops that can be booked in)
which are the following:
- Sticker giving high precision robotic arm - using a suction pump
- Quadruped robotic dog (Loke) performing a dance sessions and interacting with enthusiastic participants after the performance
Drop-in Activities
1. We utilized a DOBOT Nova 5 Robotic arm on which we mounted a custom 3D printed frame to adapt the suction pump that we had (instead of using a normal two-point gripper). By creating a Python script to maneuver the pump, predefined arm movements using the DobotStudioPro and a TCP connection between those to operate smoothly, we replicated the movement of "someone" giving a sticker as a price, and you wait for it with your palm raised upwards. We have a small video from the festival to illustrate this movement:
2. We utilized an Unitree GO2 Quadruped Robotic Dog in which we prepared some scripts (available in the Block Programming section from Functions) in order for Loke (given name for the robotic dog) to showcase a dance sequence to the participants. It was combined with manual movements from a connected controller, but also from the tablet that operated the script. Besides this, mostly when Loke was "sleeping", we had two other tables that had the Block Programming section or the Simulator section to play around with the available functionalities and to discover how to "program" him to do some more complex actions/movements. Sometimes it was accompanied by our very friendly arachnoidal robot (spider with 6 "legs") that is controlled by a remote via two pairs of transceivers.
Testimonials
Here are some of the afterthoughts from our CPS-Lab members that participated in the event: [Soon to come]
Event Gallery
Even more pictures and video from the SciFest!Photo credit: Team members of the CPS-Lab's archive
