WCRS – Virtual Fun

Posted by Erin, the RobotGrrl on Monday, February 2nd, 2009

The WCRS (Western Canadian Robotics Society) is most likely one of the most advanced hobby robotics club out there.

On Saturday at 9:00pm (EST) they had a gathering on the game Second Life. Second Life is an online 3D “game”, like the Sims, but with real people. Personally, as an RPG, I don’t really like it that much. However, as an online meeting place for clubs, I think it is an AMAZING idea!

There were a few people there, Craig (I think he runs/is one of the runners of the WCRS), Jon Hylands (he helped me get to Stanford!), Adam (???), Dan (from the SAIT). There might have been more, however I forget…

We had some fun with our avatars…

^ Dan dressed up as an i, Robot from the movie

^ Dan dressed up as a Robosapien hahahahaha

This was Craig’s avatar… SO AWESOME!

SL has a VoIP aspect of it too, so you can actually talk to people. We all introduced ourselves, it was pretty neat to see the variety of people there, even though it was a tiny group!

One of the things that was discussed was the building of the Island, and a group. They’re going to be creating virtual “offices” on their island. So, for instance, RobotGrrl.com’s office could have a banner on the outside of it, and perhaps a YouTube video playing in a loop too. We tested out playing YouTube videos, and it works amazingly well. Here you can see my video (with my real arm) inside of a non-real world.

How cool is that?!

Craig then gave me a teleportation link to visit the Museum of Robotics,

This place is pretty cool! I still haven’t looked at all of it. Something that I will have to do later! It also gave my avatar a free t-shirt. However, at that point, my avatar started to spin in a circle for some reason, and it couldn’t stop. I had to close SL…

Hopefully they will have more meetings in the future, I can’t wait to join in on them (and make a virtual office). Usually they send out a group notice on their message list, so if you want to subscribe to it, click here!

~~~

WOOHOO! I have many blog posts lined up!
Friday: Pololu Shipment
Sunday: Party Button Brainstorming
Sunday: L.A.S.E.R.

Keep looking forward to that! I will also make a post about FIRST sometime soon.

Posted in: News, Other, Projects, Robot News.
Tags: meeting, online, robotics, second life, SL, WCRS, western canadian robotics society

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