Just how smart is your smartphone? Find out by turning your smartphone into a cellbot during the APPCON™ 2010 Cellbot Hackathon Challenge.
As part of APPCON™ 2010, the world’s only mobile App-centric developer and business conference, mobile App developers will have the unique opportunity to try their hand at cellbot coding in an exciting challenge pitting App developers against one another in a competition to build the best cellbot using smartphones of their choice. First, second and third place winners will be crowned Cellbot champions and will win their very own cellbot kit to build and experiment with at home.
Participation in the APPCON™ 2010 Cellbot Hackathon Challenge is free, but attendees are encouraged to pre-register for the contest to ensure adequate availability of equipment and resources.
What is a cellbot?
Half smartphone, half robot, a cellbot is a small motorized robot with a smartphone for a brain. Built upon a mobile chassis—using wheels or tracks to maneuver—cellbots are a clever extension of the smartphone platform that allows beginner robot enthusiasts and computer programmers to experiment with the powerful features onboard ubiquitous and smartphone devices.
“Until the advent of the smartphone, building your own robot would have been an expensive and complicated process—not to mention the fact that you’d end up with a huge contraption,” said Darrell Taylor, Cellbot Hackathon contest coordinator, robot enthusiast and contributor to the cellbots open source project. “Today’s smartphones have all the necessary components for a robot—video camera, audio, GPS, accelerometer—in an inexpensive, compact device, making it incredibly fun and easy for the do-it-yourselfer to build their own robot.”
Cellbots can be programmed to operate autonomously or via remote control over a WiFi or 3G signal. Typically quite small at less than one pound, cellbots are built on an open source code that is simple enough for even the beginning roboticist or developer to master.
Cellbot Hackathon Contest
In the APPCON™ 2010 Cellbot Hackathon Contest, mobile App developers will square off in a contest to build the best cellbot to perform a specific, timed task. Performance of the task, the details of which will be revealed on August 17 (one week prior to the start of APPCON™), will be scored by a referee with points awarded for accuracy and speed.
Participants will be provided with a cellbot chassis, an API and example code for the Android platform. Using their own smartphone, participants must build an App to pilot the cellbot, either autonomously or remotely via video stream, to complete the task. Examples provided will be for Android, but the cellbot hardware is compatible with any smartphone. Extra points will be awarded for participants who program the cellbot to run on a new platform. The top three competitors will be crowned cellbot champions and win their own cellbot kit to take home.
Pre-assembled cellbot chassis will be available for purchase to use in “after-hours” programming, but in order to compete, participants must have their task performance judged during APPCON™ show hours by a referee. Participants can make as many attempts as desired; the best score will be used for competition.
“The Cellbot Hackathon Challenge promises to be a fun and exciting way for programmers and developers to test their skills with an App that produces tangible results and interacts with the real world,” said Susan Schwartz, president of ConvExx, a full-service show and event production company based in Las Vegas that is co-producing APPCON™ with Taptopia. “Cellbot programming is relatively easy and simple to do, making this contest ideal for both beginners and experienced coders.”
Set for August 24-26 at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino, APPCON™ 2010 is a world-class mobile App technical conference and expo featuring more than 40 sessions covering a wide range of the most important mobile App technologies and applications in a practical and technical fashion.
During its June Special, APPCON™ 2010 registration is just $495 for the conference and $795 for the complete pre-event sessions and conference package. To take advantage of this special pricing, registrations must be made online at www.APPCONLV.com before 12 midnight MT on June 27.
For more information about APPCON™ 2010, visit www.appconlv.com or follow us on twitter @appconlv http://twitter.com/appconlv.
© 2010, Are You Screening?. All rights reserved. Reprinting without express permission of the author is prohibited.
About Marc Eastman
Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.
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