An interesting Sunday...and a small world encounter

Yesterday afternoon my middle son Gillis and I biked over to the the university's mechanical engineering department for an open house they were having for "Open Bedrijvendag" which is an annual event where companies open their doors to the public. (And yes, the castle above is part of the campus!)

We were especially interested in this badminton robot that was recently developed by one of the spin off companies of the department. It was pretty cool to see it in action (check out the video below) but Gillis was a bit too shy to try it out for himself (and there were a ton of little kids waiting in line).


We saw a lot of other interesting high tech machines. Seeing a 3-D printer in action and really understanding how it works was awesome. I had heard about this on the radio last year and I just couldn't wrap my mind around how it worked. I think Gillis enjoyed the chance he got to direct a human sized robot they are developing to help people who are handicapped or immobile. I would have taken pictures but I didn't want to embarrass him!

Finally, one of the doctoral students was explaining one of the other machines to us. He was from India so we were speaking English with him. He said we didn't sound like we were from Belgium, so I told him I was originally from the US. He said he had lived in the US as well, so of course I asked where. "Urbana-Champaign" he replied! I had to laugh and tell him I also went to the University of Illinois, ages and ages ago. It sure is a small world, isn't it? We both agreed the U of I was a great place to go to school...but Leuven is pretty awesome too! And that hit home as we biked back through the really pretty part of the engineering campus and I realized how lucky I am to live here.