The 8th Pohang Family Science Festival hosted by APCTP (Asia Pacific Center for Theological Physics) was held for three days from Oct. 11 to Oct. 13 at Pohang Stadium. Several light-themed science activities like making spectroscopes, X-ray experience, and making UV bracelets at event booths outside, attracted many children and students of Pohang. Activities were managed by several organizations like Association of Science Teachers who are developing creativity, APC (Amusing Physics Club) and volunteers by students of nearby high schools and universities. One volunteer at the spectroscope making booth, Yoon Seong-ik, who is also a member of a science circle in Pohang JangSeong high school, described this festival as an instructive experience illustrating principles of science to Pohang citizens, adding “Better pain in legs outside than in waist inside the class room.”
Prof. Seung-hwan Kim, executive director of APCTP and also host of the festival, said, “This festival is held to stimulate interests in science to Pohang citizens and make opportunities to experience what can barely be attained by ordinary science books. And I also hope this festival enables Pohang to become two peaks of scientific fields with Daejeon.” He also expressed inconvenience on the festival in terms of discontinuity and being just one-off event of private organizations.
The 13th Korea Intelligent Robot Contest which is hosted by Pohang city, run by Pohang Institute of Intelligent Robotics and sponsored by POSTECH, Korean Intellectual Property Office and UL Korea Ltd. are also held during the same periods at the same spot. This contest is the greatest creation contest in the country. There are awards ceremony for intelligence robot parts, performance robot parts and robot Olympics in addition to an exhibition of 20 prize-winning works out of 129 candidates of this contest. The criteria for the award on intelligent and performance robot part are stability, creativity and technology and robot Olympics is performed as a robot race of humanoids and robots with multi-joint wheels respectively. ‘Hard Working Environment Climbing Robot’, an invention of the CV Lab in HanKyeong National University, was awarded the grand prize (10,000,000 KRW). There were also robots controlled by smartphones among the exhibitions.
Several other programs such as ‘Moving robot photo zone’, ‘4D moving cinema’, ‘Demonstration of robot of corporations’ and ‘Making robots’ were also involved in this contest to attract participants and make it possible for them to get their hands directly on robots. In particular, the ‘moving robot photo zone’ provided an opportunity to take a picture with ‘Paro’, a half-seal robot well-known for being used in psychotherapy of senior Japanese victims of tsunami, and other well-known robots. Inside the stadium, ‘Air swimmer’, a flying fish robot and ‘BB rider’, a Korean Segway and ‘Furo’, a future robot were also available to experience.
