SALVEtoday Archives
25-Jun-01
SALVE'S TEAM CLAMBOT TO JOIN 'BEST FLOAT 2000' WINNER IN THIS YEAR'S BRISTOL FOURTH OF JULY PARADE
By Public Affairs Staff
NEWPORT, R.I. - While still reveling in their success at the National BattleBots competition, Salve Regina University's Team Clambot is preparing for its next challenge - creating a float for the Bristol Fourth of July Parade.
Members of Team Clambot have been invited to join Rhode Island icon and variety-show-host Bob Venturini on his float in the Bristol Fourth of July Parade. Last year, Venturini won the best float distinction, so the pressure is on Team Clambot to help create another winning float.
"If we can build a robot in two months, we can put together a parade float in two weeks," Mike Thombs, chair of Salve's information systems science department, said during a recent appearance on Venturini's cable variety show "An Hour with Bob."
Thombs, who is also the faculty advisor to Team Clambot, and several other members of the team recently appeared on Venturini's show to talk about the success of their robot, "Rhode Hog," at the Comedy Central spring 2001 National BattleBots competition in San Francisco, CA.
Not only did the team make it to the televised-round of the competition (by placing in the top 40), during one of the three-minute battles, Rhode Hog was equipped with a 'battle cam.' So when the competition airs on Comedy Central starting July 10 at 10 p.m., some of the footage shown will be from the Rhode Hog perspective.
The team received support from the Salve community and engineers at the Portsmouth, R.I.-based Hodges Badge Company. "They donated a lot of time to help troubleshoot some major technical glitches," Salve graduate student Daniel Thombs said. "The morning we were supposed to ship the robot out, we had a problem with one of the gears, and Hodges Badge fixed it."