As we explore out in the Citizen Science and MakerFaire communities, we often meet up with amazing people doing awesome projects. HotPopRobot is one of those amazing groups, so here are some of the truly awesome things this maker family have created!

From their site:
“HotPopRobot is a maker-family enterprise co-founded in 2014 by Artash, Arushi, Rati and Vikas Nath, to bring discussions on Science, Space exploration, and Technology in our everyday conversation. It encourages families and kids to become creators (and not consumers), by undertaking projects on space, robotics, coding and science.

Solar-X Device (2017). Credit: Vikas Nath.

We started this enterprise after winning the NASA Space Apps Toronto 2014 Award for our Mars Rover : CuriousBot and ending up in top 5 NASA Space Apps Winners (People’s Choice) globally! We ended up winning the Challenge again in 2017 as well as the Canadian Space Agency’s Space App Challenge 2017.

It fired our imagination. It is only when we set our vision and goals ambitious in science and space exploration that can we answer the question: Are we the only one out there in the Universe?

For the moment, the answer lies in opportunities we can create for the next generation to become excited about science and space exploration!

HotPopRobot creates projects and simulation based on science, technology, coding and we do several outreach events every year through Maker Festivals, NASA and Canadian Space Apps Challenge, Ontario Science Centre, NASA Youth Space Apps Challenge, school fairs, and community events.”

Projects that HotPopRobot have recently featured include:

• Yes I Can: Satellite Art (2017) Winner of Canadian Space Agency SpaceApps Awards 2017 – Canada 150 logo and other mosaics made using data gathered by the Canadian Satellite RadarSat-2.


Black Hole Robot (2017). Credit: Vikas Nath.

• Black Hole Robot (2017) TAVES Electronics Show, Maker Festival 2017 – Our 30 lbs battle bot and a veteran of several robot battles!
• Solar-X Device (2017) Frontpage coverage in Toronto Metro Newspaper – To take solar measurements and help us understand more about Solar Eclipses and Climate Change.
• Trappist-1 Model: Lights, Music and Science (2018) Ontario Science Centre, Toronto – Trappist-1’s Musical System light and sound model where the motion of the planets are controlled by the music they generate and they all synchronize for a grand finale! It required making, learning musical notes, coding of midi files, Arduino, relays, led lights and lot more: a very challenging project. So we had to do it!
• Space-REX: Predict Risk Index of Asteroid Collision using Artificial Intelligence (2018) Mission Hack Toronto – We decided to create a project which will use Artificial Intelligence / Neural Networks to predict the “Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale” for the collision of an asteroid with Earth. Our system would then convert the values of this scale into musical notes which would then be used to blink lights at the appropriate frequency on a custom designed hardware for displaying Asteroid data.

Here’s a cool video of HotPopRobot doing a project was inspired by the family’s visit to the Kennedy Space Centre’s Apollo 11 / Saturn V building in 2015 where they saw the Control Room for the launch along with the giant Sequence Panel, VAB, Launch Pad and the Saturn V rocket itself.:

If you’re looking for great project ideas or more info on being a maker, check out the HotPopRobot website, or email Vikas at vikas.nath@gmail.com / www.VikasNath.org