On Tuesday April 4, 2023, MassRobotics was thrilled to welcome Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, her team and Boston Chief of Economic Opportunity and Inclusion to tour our space, meet with startups and join one of our STEM programs as we kicked off the start to National Robotics Week.
Mayor Wu and Chief Idowu were treated to a warm welcome at MassRobotics, a brief overview of who we are and what we do and a tour of the space. On their tour, Mayor Wu met Jaime, a 1st tester of resident Tatem, which strives to offer the millions of people with deafblindness their first independent communication tool through a robotic hand that can communicate with American Sign Language (ASL). Jamie, her communication aide, and the Tatem robot were able to converse with Mayor Wu about the trial they were conducting, the gaps in existing communication tools and where the technology is today.
Next, Mayor Wu’s tour met with Cleo Robotics, who is building the world’s first indoor safe and friendly drone for applications including law enforcement, surveying, security, and warehousing. Mayor Wu got to see Cleo’s proprietary design work in real time.
The Mayor’s tour ended in the MassRobotics dedicated STEM lab, where students from Boston’s Eliot School in the North End were learning to interact with and direct various robots in different stages during a 2 hour workshop.. Mayor Wu learned about the many workshops we offer students, including a drone academy, bluetech underwater robotics academy, high school girls Jumpstart program and was able to watch student teams program a robot to navigate, pivot and turn, and retrieve items.
MassRobotics and New England FIRST partnered to offer BPS students a hands-on Robotics experience during National Robotics Week. We hosted workshops incorporating the FIRST robots in a mildly competitive environment, as well as introduced middle and high school students to industry grade robotics. Schools we hosted included:
- New Mission High School
- Roxbury Prep
- John D. O’Bryant
- Madison Park Technical Vocational School
- Holmes Innovation School
- The English High School
- David A Ellis
- Eliot Innovation School
- Bates Elementary School
- In addition we hosted the Josiah Quincy Upper School.
MassRobotics was thrilled to host Mayor Wu and look forward to working with her office!
