Category Archives: Meeting Announcements

DPRG Annual Meeting for 2026 – January 24, 2026

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

DPRG Monthly Meeting – Show and Tell – July 26, 2025

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The DPRG monthly meeting for July 2025 was a “Show and Tell” event. Members brought their projects and talked about robots.

It was a golden opportunity to see progress on various projects that you hear about during RBNV and on the Discord channel in person.

Pizza was served at lunch for all attendees.

DPRG Visit to RobotLAB – 06/28/25

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DPRG Members and friends toured the RobotLAB facility and had a chance to mingle with the robots! They were able to see about 20 different robot types that address different market segments. It was a great opportunity to see a wide variety of real robots that get to be deployed in customer environments. After the tour the group was able to share lunch with the hosts. A good time was had by all!

Power Lunch – 6/15/25

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On June 15 DPRG held a Power Lunch at the Derbyshire pub in Frisco. The event was attended by about a dozen DPRG robot-heads. There was good beer, and good English food, and lots of talk about robots and AI.

DPRG holds a Power Lunch about once a quarter. Make sure that when the next one is scheduled that you plan to attend. They are fun and provide a lot of person-on-person conversations. Watch the website and the Discord channel for details of the next event.