On Saturday December 10th, several Team 501 students went to Pembroke Academy in Pembroke, NH to attend a Programming and controlling the cRIO workshop. At the workshop, WPI’s Brad Miller showed off some new features in the 2012 FRC programming library for Java and C++. Mentors and students got to ask questions and see a live demo of some of the new features in action. Later in the workshop, Kevin O’ Connor , a software engineer from FIRST, showed off the capabilities of the Microsoft Kinect system that will be included in every 2012 FRC kit of parts. The Kinect will allow teams to use gestures in order to control their 2012 robots. Furthermore, teams will be able to customize the gestures that are part of the Kinect. After lunch, National Instruments’ LabView was demonstrated and those in attendance were able to see the features of LabView with an FRC robot. The workshop was very informative overall and allowed people to have a small taste of what’s coming when Kickoff 2012 rolls around on January 7th.
