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<\/a>\u201cThere\u2019s no hard deadlines, there\u2019s no requirements,\u201d says club member Cody Pargee, \u201cso the lack of hierarchy gives it a flexible structure. There\u2019s no interview process to come in. I mean, it\u2019s very open-source and collaborative.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Even those in more specialized areas of study are constantly learning from one another, utilizing the software and materials that are already made available to them.<\/p>\n \u201cSolidWorks is a big one for modelling all the 3D printing components,\u201d says Brady. \u201cIt\u2019s an industrial-grade piece of software that we have access to for free, so we like to use that. And then there\u2019s also the machine shop, so if we wanted to actually mill or lathe or make some piece of metal, we have access to that too.\u201d<\/p>\n Many of the club\u2019s resources, beyond what their programs provide, can be accessed through Camosun Innovates, the applied research branch of the college that strives to make manufacturing equipment and technology more accessible to students, as well as to the broader community.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re into 3D printing as a hobby, you could go in there and see a $100,000 3D printer and say, \u2018Oh, so my hobby has a translation into an industrial use,\u2019\u201d says Pargee. \u201cLike, people manufacture aerospace and automotive parts. So, I\u2019m just using that as an example of transitioning our skills and enthusiasm into actual, real-world, high-paying jobs. It\u2019s a good bridge between the theoretical.\u201d<\/p>\n And oftentimes, the theoretical can become practical. Rob Bartnik, an emeritus member of the Robotics and Automation club, is an example of the many successes that can be found in specialized, student-led organizations such as this.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving the robotics club meant that I could use what I learned as part of a capstone project to raise wheelchairs upstairs,\u201d says Bartnik. \u201cAnd that then led to a co-op work term with Ocean Networks Canada\u2014one of the country\u2019s leading research institutes\u2014maintaining Wally, an actual Benthic Crawler; a thing that maintains networks miles under the sea. So I got to do some maintenance on that, and all of that came from a little bit of time spent working with people who just wanted to know a little bit more about robots.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As for the club\u2019s own projects, they\u2019re currently working on a humanoid robot called Alfie, which is now in its fifth year of development, alongside MARC, a modular rover which entered development last semester. And while the club has big plans for both of these projects, their sights have largely been set on MARC as their primary focus.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have another output for MARC, specifically, which is to make it sort of like an open-source modular rover,\u201d says Brady. \u201cSo we have an end goal, which is that we\u2019d like to eventually submit an online package that people can download and build themselves. So there\u2019s an actual goal output for some of the things we do here as well.\u201d<\/p>\n With anyone welcome to join, the club has fostered a strong balance between learning and teaching, hoping to dissolve the fear often associated with trying something new.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou come in here and you can see that it all starts at the very beginning,\u201d says Pargee. \u201cIt\u2019s not as impossible as you might think because you can see all the individual systems that go into it and how they\u2019re developed. It doesn\u2019t start as a finished project. There\u2019s all sorts of steps to get there, and seeing those in action I think can take away some of the fear and the \u2018I can never figure this out\u2019 aspect to it.\u201d<\/p>\n