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| The World of Robotics | | By Gareth Branwyn for Screenager Central |
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"Sorry I can't come over and listen to music today, I have to troubleshoot these power management problems and calculate the gear ratios for the drive train." Okay, so you may never hear a friend actually talking like this (unless you're in private school with the next Bill Gates), but the world of which the above geek speaks -- the world of the robotics -- is coming to grade schools in a big way. |
Some may be put off by the propeller beanie stigma of such activity, but ask yourself: What would you rather be doing in shop class, building a birdhouse or building a combat robot? And what would you rather be doing in your Visual Basic class, coding up a game of Pong or programming a tiny robot to explore the classroom? Teachers and students are discovering that robotics is a great way to explore a whole host of mechanical, digital, and scientific subjects, and most of all, it's really fun. If you don't already have robotics as part of your school curriculum, here are some of the programs and resources that you should tell your teachers about. Print out the info and then leave it on your teacher's desk, along with a big shiny Apple (iPod), and see if you can't tempt him or her into considering the idea.
Battlebots IQ
Anyone who watched Battlebots on Comedy Central couldn't help but get caught up in the excitement. The show sent legions of fans into their garages to cannibalize the family mower in hopes of turning it into a winning combat robot competitor. The show's no longer on the air, but the competitions continue. Creators of this new mechanized sport have also brought the fun and education of building robots into the classroom with their Battlebots IQ program. Designed to be plugged into high school tech ed., physics, and other science and tech programs, Battlebots IQ has a complete curriculum for the classroom and a series of local and national combat robot events in which participating schools can compete. The Battlebots IQ Web site has great material on it, including sample lessons that should help get your teacher excited about this cool curriculum.
FIRST
Before mad inventor Dean Kamen produced the Segway scooter that put all Razor owners on notice, he unleashed legions of bright high school kids on the world of robotics, giving them unique building challenges (for example: create a robot that can stack boxes), and then having them compete against each other. Thus, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was born. Now ten years old, FIRST boasts 800 teams involved in 23 regional competitions (and an annual national championship). FIRST also sponsors a LEGO robotics league for kids 9-14. To find out about getting your school involved in FIRST, go to the "Getting Started with FIRST robotics" link on the FIRST home page.
Botball
This is another regional/national robot competition geared towards high school classes. Teams build autonomous (no remote control) robots that play against other bots on an air hockey-like playing surface. The objective is to get more of your ping-pong balls into scoring position than your opponent's. The specific challenges and scoring rules change each year, so robot designs must too. The Botball educators come to your school, run a two-day workshop for teachers, and then students have six weeks to build their bots. Your school gets to keep all of the equipment and robot parts provided by the Botball instructors. The Botball site offers details on registering for the program and even information on getting financial aid.
Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots
If your school doesn't have the money, or your teachers are not interested in outside programs, fear not. You can still have fun building robots, thanks to this awesome book. Okay, this is a shameless plug; I wrote this book. The purpose of it is to provide an easy-to-understand history of robots, an introduction to all aspects of robot building, and three detailed robot-building projects. The projects are especially geared (no pun intended) towards students faced with science fair projects. The three bots are built around a coat hanger, a dead computer mouse, and two AOL CD-ROMs, so the projects are very affordable to students or classrooms on a budget. The third project uses an on-board computer that can be re-programmed in a bunch of different ways, making it a mini robot development platform that can be used over and over again for different projects.
Many tech industry experts are predicting that the next revolution in technology will be in robotics. Getting in on the ground floor of this revolution makes perfect sense for the career-minded student. Anyway, that's what you should tell your teachers to try and get them to bring robots to your school. The fact that bot-building and competing is (as Apple CEO Steve Jobs would say) "insanely great" fun and a good excuse to crawl around on the floor and get credit for it. But we'll keep that between us.
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