LYNN — If robots, artificial intelligence, automation, and drones are your thing, North Shore Community College’s STEM Education Conference is for you.
Scheduled for Friday, March 9 in the school gym on Broad Street, the four-hour free session offers speakers who will discuss the successes and challenges in robotics, automation research and application.
Dubbed the Northeast Massachusetts Science, Technology, Engineering and Math conference, the session will focus on new robotics technologies, using robotics and automation to see where they are going, what jobs they’ll need to fill, and how education can better prepare students to compete in the workforce.
Speakers include: Fady Saad of MassRobotics, Laura Major, vice president of engineering at CyPhy Works, Thomas Maloney, engineering manager at MilliporeSigma, and Scott Courtemanche, engineering manager at Abiomed.
Conference organizers say robotics technology impacts every industry and solves problems that have gone unsolved.
The Titanic was discovered by Robert Ballard in a deep-sea submersible called Alvin, and a remotely operated underwater robot called Jason Junior, or JJ, in the 1980s.
But lots has happened in robotics since then. Recently, researchers have teamed up to develop a fleet of a dozen underwater drones, costing $125,000 each, that they hope will survey the deepest parts of the ocean faster and cheaper than has been done before.
The oil and gas industries wouldn’t mind knowing more about what lurks below the ocean, and the military has already sought ways to position sensors on the ocean floor. This latest technology could make underwater searches, such as the unsuccessful nearly three-year effort to find missing Malaysian Airline flight MH370, more affordable and faster.
The ocean is not the only place where robotics are key. NASA’s Curiosity has been roving the Mars surface since 2012. The robot set out to answer the question: Did Mars ever have the right environmental conditions to support small life forms called microbes? Early in its mission, Curiosity’s scientific tools found chemical and mineral evidence of past habitable environments on the red planet. It continues to explore the rock record from a time when Mars could have been home to microbial life.
Last month, photos from the robot shows Curiosity in the middle of the dusty, red Mars terrain, with Mount Sharp in the background. The rim of Gale Crater is also visible.
A small, self-focusing camera on the end of Curiosity’s arm took the selfies. Dozens of pictures were snapped in January and sent back to earth.
NASA is preparing to put another lander on Mars, a robotic geologist named InSight. Liftoff is targeted for May.
