Five Ford plug-in hybrid vehicles and a team of engineers performing evaluation testing in the Pittsburgh area will be the focus of an informal gathering hosted by the Robotics Institute's Charge Car project from 6 to 7 p.m. Thursday at the Electric Garage, 4621 Forbes Ave. Anyone is welcome to come by to talk with Chris Lear, senior development engineer in Ford’s plug-in hybrid vehicle group, and to see four Ford C-Max Energi PHEVs and a Fusion Energi PHEV.

Almost anything that can be made with paper, paint and cardboard can be animated with an educational robotics kit developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute. No technical experience is necessary to use the kit, but classroom teachers say it fosters interest in technology among students ages 11 and up. The kit, called Hummingbird, is now available for sale ($199) through a CMU spinoff company, BirdBrain Technologies.

Students from four Mon Valley high schools focused cameras on their friends, teachers and communities over the past year to produce documentary videos addressing such topics as race, crime and the search for role models. The videos, produced through the Hear Me 101 project, will be screened for the public from 6 to 8 p.m., July 15 at the B Building Auditorium on the Community College of Allegheny County South Campus.

Drivers can struggle to see when driving at night in a rainstorm or snowstorm, but a smart headlight system invented by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute can improve visibility by constantly redirecting light to shine between particles of precipitation.

William “Red” Whittaker, who has repeatedly developed robots to work in such inhospitable places as contaminated nuclear plants, abandoned mines, active volcanoes, Antarctic glaciers and the moon, has been awarded the 2012 Simon Ramo Medal by IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization.

Tiramisu Transit LLC, a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff, has received $102,000 in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to commercialize Tiramisu, the smartphone application that enables transit riders to create real-time information about bus schedules and seating.

A high-resolution image of a palm tree in Brazil, which under close examination shows bees, wasps and flies feasting on nectars and pollens, was the top jury selection among the images captured during last December’s Nearby Nature GigaBlitz. It’s also an example of what the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab and other organizers hope participants will produce for the next GigaBlitz, June 20-26.

IEEE Spectrum’s Automaton blog has written about G. Ayorkor Korsah (Phd, Robotics 2011), an assistant professor of computer science at Ashesi University in Ghana, and her key role in a new initiative to enhance robotics education, research, and industry in Africa. Korsah is an adviser to TechBridgeWorld and the main faculty contact for this summer’s iSTEP internship in Ghana.