Category Archives: Meeting Announcements

DPRG Monthly Meeting – ModLinker: A Different Approach to Robot and System Design – 6/27/2026

Posted on by

DPRG’s monthly meeting for June was a presentation by Mark Dombrowski on ModLinker

Presentation Summary:  Meeting Summary (PDF)

ModLinker is an attempt to create a set of tools for making modular hardware systems, like robots, simple to create, reuse, scale, and share. The talk will be an introduction to the system followed by a request for beta-testers.

The beta version of the system is based around Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers and MicroPython. It is designed to be simple enough for beginners but also allows features for more advanced users.

DPRG Monthly Meeting – Unitree Go2 Robot dog (and maybe more…) – 4/25/2026

Posted on by

Meeting AI Summary

The April monthly DPRG meeting featured a presentation by Sensori Robotics, who demonstrated their Unitree Go2 Robot dog. It was a chance to see a robot “dog” go through its paces. Sensory Robotics also discussed their pivot from robotic mowers to building research-focused, wheel-based, bi-manual humanoid robots that use physical AI software. Ross Melbourne explained that the shift to Vision Language Action models and zero-shot learning is driving massive funding toward humanoid robotics.

After the presentation, Sensory Robotics had a give-away of excess inventory from the Robotmow mowers that they have liquidated. The give-away included brushless DC motors, wheel motors, mower wheels, and various other parts.

The post meeting show-n-tell which is always an interesting time to share ideas. Tnis month’s show-n-tell included a demonstration by Jason of his animatronic robot prototype, ‘Endoskeleton’. Also, Mike Williamson made robot runs of his 495-gram sumo robot and his ROS barrel racing robot. They performed very well.

A pizza lunch was served after the meeting. Next month is Roborama!

DPRG Monthly Meeting – Show’n’tell, Swap-meet, Plans for Robie – 2/28/2026

Posted on by

The DPRG will hold its February meeting at the Dallas Makerspace this Saturday Feb 28 at 10AM. There will be a buzzer on the door to admit attendees to the Makerspace. With the holiday season and the club’s annual meeting over, it is now time to start to build robots.

The agenda will be:

  •  Show’n’tell. Bring your robots to exhibit, demo, and talk about. This is great motivation to start this year’s project.
  •  Swap-meet! Bring anything you don’t want that you think someone else might. Be prepared to find stuff you want. This is a good opportunity to do some spring cleaning and concentrate your robot building efforts.
  •  Robie repair/upgrade brainstorming & planning. At the annual meeting it was proposed to start up biweekly in person work meetings to repair and upgrade Robie as a club project. Ideas and help are welcomed by anyone wanting to make him even cooler.

All are welcome to attend the meeting.

How to watch remotely:

• Join Google Meet https://meet.google.com/mwm-imzg-rss
• Join by phone: (US) +1 470-222-8542 , PIN: 334726924

DPRG Annual Meeting for 2026 – January 24, 2026

Posted on by

The DPRG held its annual member’s meeting on Jan 24th. Due to the weather the meeting was held by Google Meet only.

AI summary of the meeting

The agenda was:

  • Election of officers for 2026
  • Brainstorm what members want the club to do in 2026,
    • Tech-talk topics
    • anything else – activities, competitions, etc.

The officer candidates for 2026 were elected:

President: Mark Reynolds

Vice-president: Paul Bouchier

Secretary: Doug Paradis

Treasurer: Steve Edwards

IT Officer: Pat Caron

See the AI summary for the results of the brain storming session of ideas for 2026.

RoboColumbus-2025: Results, Robot Interviews, and Run Videos

Posted on by

DPRG’s RoboColumbus Outdoor Rover competition for 2025 was held on November 22. The competition was hosted by the Edward’s family, which is greatly appreciated by DPRG. The morning started out with the course layout. Donuts and coffee were provided for the judges and competitors. While the course details were finalized and the cone waypoints handed out, competitors made final checks on their robots and used the practice cones to set up vision systems. At midday, pizza was served, then the competition started. Each competing robot was allowed 3 runs. Winners were based on the best runs of each robot. Everyone had a good time.

Congratulations to Scott Gibson, who achieved a Perfect Score in a Human-Planned run (unlimited waypoints) and a 6 in the 3-waypoint challenge.

 

Results:

Competitor / RobotRun 1Run 2Run 3
Scott Gibson / B.E.L.C.H 1st place – Perfect Score⭐9⭐
(5:37 + 2min penalty)		3
(3-wpt Challenge)		6
(3-wpt Challenge)
Scott Gibson / T.U.R.D
2nd place		3
Steve Edwards / Yarbo Mower Tractor
— Demo Run —		7
Mike Williamson / RC25–

Robot Interviews:
Scott Gibson – B.E.L.C.H: Belch Interview

Scott Gibson – T.U.R.D: T.U.R.D. Interview

Mike Williamson – RC25: RC25 Interview

Run Videos:

Scott Gibson’s B.E.L.C.H. robot: run-1  – run-2 – run-3

Scott Gibson’s T.U.R.D. robot: 

Steve Edward’s Mower robot (demo): run-1

Robot run videos are very helpful in showing the unexpected tribulations that the robots endure while attempting the tasks of the competition. Even runs that did not go well often have lessons.

DPRG Monthly Meeting – Using Git and GitHub and AI Generated Movie – 10/25/2025

Posted on by

Video:

AI Generated Meeting Summary:  Meeting Summary (PDF)

DPRG’s October monthly meeting was held at the Dallas Maker Space on October 25, starting at 10:00 AM.

The meeting this month was a double-header talk.

DPRG member, Paul Bouchier, completed a talk on Git and GitHub originally scheduled for the September meeting. He explained why individual robotics developers would benefit from using these tools. The talk covered how to get started, how to perform frequently used operations, and common scenarios.

Guest, Thomas Messerschmidt, showed and discussed a movie he made using AI. The movie’s plot is an interview with an AI that went badly off the rails. This should be a fun watch.

After a pizza lunch at Noon, the floor was open for a “Show and Tell” session.

    • Scott showed his Robocolumbus robot, Belch
    • Paul & Mark showed improvements to the Makers Pet robot
    • Eric showed improvements to his robot

DPRG Monthly Meeting – Update on Human/Robot Voice Interface Powered by Real-Time LLMs, and Using Git and GitHub – 9/27/2025

Posted on by

DPRG’s September monthly meeting was held at the Dallas Maker Space on September 27, starting at 10:00 AM.

Slide deck: Slide Deck (PDF)

The meeting this month was a double-header talk.

DPRG member, Karim Virani, followed up last month’s “By your command” presentation by demonstrating his robot, Barney, accepting and acting on spoken natural-language commands. Karim discussed cover insights on prompt construction, what the camera sees, and shared context engineering.

DPRG member, Paul Bouchier, gave a talk on Git and GitHub. He explained why individual robotics developers would benefit from using these tools. The talk covered how to get started, how to perform frequently used operations, and common scenarios.

After a pizza lunch at Noon, the floor was open for a “Show and Tell” session.

DPRG Robot Power Lunch – Sunday, Sep 21,2025 at Ford’s Garage

Posted on by

Join fellow DPRG members and friends at this quarter’s DPRG Robot Power Lunch. It will be held at Ford’s Garage on Sunday, September 21, 2025, at Noon. Ford’s Garage is located at 3904 Dallas Pkwy, Plano.

Make sure to reserve a spot so that we can sit together. Contact Paul via email at president@dprg.org or on the Discord #meetings channel.

DPRG holds a Power Lunch approximately every three months so members and friends can meet informally to discuss projects and share a meal.

DPRG Monthly Meeting – By Your Command, a Human-Robot Voice Interface Powered by Real-Time LLMs – 8/23/2025

Posted on by

Meeting Video:

AI Summary of Karim’s Presentation: AI Summary (PDF)
Slide Deck: Slide Deck (PDF)

DPRG member, Karim Virani shared his experiences building a voice and video interaction mode for his Pioneer 3 chassis-based ROS2 robot, Barney. The goal is to combine chat and command modes into a responsive unified experience for operators as well as bystanders. According to Karim, there is also a dark side …

Karim did not focus on the AI-assisted software development process so much as how to use AIs for this specific purpose. He also has a Git repository at https://github.com/pondersome/by_your_command.

The meeting was held at the Dallas Maker Space on August 23 starting at 10:00AM.