We build Robots and Robot Subassemblies.

Admission and Membership Classification

Admission to the Club

Option #1:                You are building a robot or a robot subassembly. You are in. Let's chat. We are a resource for you.


Option #2:                You are not building a robot, but want to. A designated club member will give you a quick verbal skill check to evaluate your

                                      skill level, and your proven accomplishments (ex: you have been playing around with C++ for 2 years and have turned on motors

                                      using an Arduino). If your skills are adequate, you will be admitted to the club. We will help you get going with your project; that

                                      is, you will do all the work, and we will help guide you. This will allow you to build something meaningful faster. If your skills

                                      are not there yet, please visit the I want to learn robotics page.

Types of Memberships

The Toronto Robotics Club has a tiered membership based on your skill set. The higher the skill set the more benfits. Here are the types of memberships:

 

  • “Your_Name” – almost impossible. Your creativity has changed an aspect of the field of robotics. An example could be getting a patent, that someone pays you to license. If you hit this level, you will be tasked with coming up with an adequate name for this type of member.
  • Pro – Highly skilled and knowledgeable. To achieve this status you have fully designed, built and programmed a meaningful robot (lidar, mobile base, a manipulator) running ROS from start to finish on your own. It’s OK if some help was received from others; ex: a part of the robot was someone else's design that you implemented.
  • Builder
    • built an involved (mechanical, electrical, programming, and integrated) robotic subassembly, or
    • You are such an exceptional skill level in your field that a team of builders has relied on you to rescue a robot build that stalled and was covered in dust.
  • Contributor – skilled and knowledgeable. To achieve this status you must have made a meaningful contribution to a robot project, or a robotic subassembly. For exmaple, you did all the mechanical design, or electrical design, or programming for a subassembly.
  • Up & Coming – To have this status in the club, you must have:
    • Completed a series of beginner basics projects, and have a basic understanding of the main robot components, what their role is, what happens when they fail, the theory behind how they work, or
    • Are able to demonstrate proficiency in robotics, through some other avenue, and have shown dedication and work for attaining skills towards building robots.
  • Supporter – you have donated hardware or some other resources for use by club members. We do accept things, such as hardware, and a place to meet. If you want to help the club, please contact the club for the items we currently need. As a supporter you will be invited to all events/celebrations held when a robot is completed (or some notable milestone is achieved).

Why Does The Club Need Different Types Of Memberships?

The club has a clear admission cut-off based on technical skills and robotics knowledge. Once you are admitted to the club, everyone will be rated based on skill levels, achievements and contributions. The reason behind this grouping (all things being equal) is to allow members with a higher skill set to have more influence on the direction of the club, more access to assistance, more access to resources, and more access to people who may contribute to their project. We believe that the kind of person who knows a ton about robotics has invested their time and are passionate about robotics; hence they are more likely to help the club meet it's mandate of supporting people who are building robots and robotic subassemblies, and helping to guide and teach others who are also building robots and robotic assemblies. Other reasons for giving priority to the skilled members are:

 

  • The higher the skill set, the more likely they are to guide you to an easier solution to your problem, resulting in a working robot, or a better built robot.
  • The folks with higher skill set need to make tough choices about how to allocate scarce club resources. Even now, the club has some hardware that we are willing to loan to members to assist them with robot projects. In the future we hope to have more hardware support from donors. In the event where projects are competing for the same resource, having a tiered membership allows the most skilled members to decide which project is best suited (closest to completion, most likely to be completed successfully, best functionality, most pizzaz, etc...) to receive or borrow the hardware.

Another reason for separating skill sets is to make sure the club efficient during meetings. If membership rows, each tier of members will be able to meet independently to discuss skill specific matters.

Moving To A Higher Membership Type

With time, we expect completed projects to set a precedent. So that anyone who meets or exceeds the bar will attain that level of membership. The precedent for the membership type will be set based on the last project (meaning your project has to be better than the last project).