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| Students Come to MITRE for Robot-Building Event October 2010
The high school students beamed as they showed off their inventions. One was a "territorial robot" several inches in diameter which stops for obstacles, evaluates them, and determines whether to attack with a hand-made, miniature hammer. Another was an interactive, musical art piece featuring a "Seinfeld" character swinging a conductor's baton to the strains of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"—or as the student put it, the "Ode to George." The students made these creations during a three-day robotics workshop held recently on MITRE's Bedford, Mass. campus as part of MITRE's STEM Outreach Initiative, through which MITRE encourages young people to become involved in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. Attending were five students from Lexington High School in Lexington, Mass. The students learned about microcontroller programming, software and sensors to create interactive robots and art pieces. The workshop was the result of a collaboration between STEM Outreach Initiative volunteers and staff from the Artbotics program led by Dr. Holly Yanco of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell and partnered with the Revolving Museum in Lowell, Mass. Artbotics, which provided the kits used by students to build their creations, encourages student expression through the blending of art and robotics. Jennifer Casper, a MITRE lead software systems engineer, worked with the Artbotics Development Team to modify the program for the MITRE workshop. "In the process of building the pieces, the students experience all phases of design: they have to come up with an idea, make use of the hardware and software tools, implement and test, and communicate their work. Artbotics is a creative way to introduce students to robotics," Casper said, adding, "It is rewarding to see the moment when a student understands how the code they write translates to reality." The student who created the territorial robot explained how he spent three hours writing, de-bugging, and testing his robot's software code. It was programmed to perform certain actions in a looping sequence, the student explained, showing workshop visitors how the robot reacted to obstacles such as a person's foot or a table leg. Another student demonstrated her robotic carousel, on which rotated miniature paper horses she had made. Another of the robotics projects, a race car, was inspired by one student's love for Mustang cars. He programmed it to drive around without colliding into obstacles. Lexington High School Social Worker Laura Smith, who helped run the program, described the robotics workshop as an ideal activity for helping the students "learn to work together, learn from each other, and interact with new people." MITRE volunteers Courtney Figucia (daughter of Robert Figucia, a MITRE principal communications engineer), Barry Lai, a software systems engineer, and Dan Mauer, a senior software systems engineer, assisted Casper in running the workshop, which is one of many ongoing STEM activities at MITRE. —by Maria S. Lee Page last updated: October 8, 2010 | Top of page |
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