Just take a short pause in your Christmas preparations and spare a thought for next spring when we will have our annual micromouse and small robot international conference – MINOS 11. For 2011, the intended dates are April 9th and 10th. It is the Saturday and Sunday two weeks before Easter what with Easter being late and all…
So that we can ensure there will be sufficient uptake and can go ahead and book facilities, can you please send me an expression of interest at your earliest convenience.
For those that have never been, MINOS is an annual opportunity for a get together over a whole weekend. While originally aimed almost exclusively at the micromouse community, there is plenty of scope to extend the range of interest to other small robots. So, if you are interested in micromouse, wall-follower, drag race, line follower, sumo, biped or other small robot activities you might find something of interest at MINOS.
Actually, since this is a user-generated event, turning up and contributing a presentation, talk, demo or just examples of your work, it is entirely up to you how interesting the weekend is.
MINOS is held at Royal Holloway, University of London in Egham, Surrey. It is within easy reach of the M25 to the west of London. Find out more here:
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/
We generally meet up at around 10am on the Saturday and enjoy a day of various presentations related to robotics on the small scale. There is always an opportunity to learn something new, find out more about some event or technique or type of robot. There may be lectures, demonstrations, discussions, show and tell or seminars. It is up to you.
In the evening, many attendees make their way into town for a meal at one of the local restaurants so the event is as much social as technical. Overnight accommodation is available in the University residences on site. For those travelling from further afield, there is also accommodation available of the Friday.
On the Sunday, there is the chance to put your mouse or other robot to the test as we hold semi-formal contests. We are generally finished at around lunchtime on the Sunday.
You can see what we got up to last year here:
https://micromouseonline.com/blog/2010/04/12/minos-2010-report
or follow the minos link in the categories menu on your left.
Costs for those wishing to stay over on the Saturday night will be £70 and just £20 for day visitors. These costs have not increased from 2008!
If you are interested in coming along, please let me know by email. Please indicate whether you might be interested in booking overnight accommodation. I would also like to hear from anyone who is interested in doing a slot, however big or small, during Saturday.