The San Jacinto College of Pasadena, TX, in conjunction with the National Science Foundation, is hosting a series of week-long summer camps called Robot Extravaganza. In these camps, eight and ninth graders are participating in problem solving, field trips and projects that focus on the fascinating world of robotics! This is Robot Extravagnaza’s second year, and this year they are offering three levels of difficulty in their courses. We applaud the teachers, students and parents involved in the planning and participation of this camp! The Bots4Tots teams sends a resounding “holla at ‘cha”! 

The Robot Extravaganza planners and partners, such as the N.S.F., want not only to introduce today’s young American student to the fascinating world of technology, but moreover to engage and educate him/her in that world. The goal is to prepare the coming generation of professional minds in such a way that, as their hobbies perhaps evolve into careers, they can make an impact on and improve the technology of our world.

“This program is interested in addressing such questions as:  What does it take to effectively interest and prepare students to participate in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce of the future?  What are the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that students need in order to participate productively in the changing STEM workforce and be innovators, particularly in STEM-related networked computing and information and communication technology (ICT) areas?” source

The students are using the Lego System Mindstorm’s NXT kits; they are making robotic arms, anthropomorphic robots, canimorphic robots (that’s “robot doggies” in layman’s), and they are even designing and creating their own robots as well!

“And, it can even get a little competitive: after building their own robots, campers are told to build a difficult maze. ‘The first task is can they themselves go through their own maze, and the second is can they go through their opponents’ maze,’ [camp director Johnny] Moya said.” source

See for yourself:

Also, a local news channel in Texas featured this unique camp this week. You can see a video clip from that feature here!

2009 has proven to be a very exciting year for robots everywhere. The Carnegie Mellon’s Robot Hall of Fame announces that it will have a permanent residence at the Robo World exhibit! Roboworld is the world’s largest permanent robotics exhibition, and is located in the historic Carnegie Science Center, one of four museums founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1895.

“Hardly a month goes by without news-making innovations coming out of local universities and companies engaged in the robotics industry. Yet for all of this activity, connections between robotics and everyday life are often unknown or misunderstood by the general public. At the same time, public interest in robotics is high, and the topic can effectively engage people of all ages. Robots fascinate us, and the topic can be used to motivate youth toward careers in science and technology. Carnegie Science Center’s roboworld™ exhibition captures the essence of the fascination of robotics. And what better city to host the world’s largest permanent robotics exhibit than Pittsburgh, where so many innovations have occurred already? (1)

…For the past decade Pittsburgh, also known by the moniker ‘Roboburgh,’ has been identified as one of only a handful of locations leading the country in developing cutting-edge robotics technology. From the establishment of The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in 1979, to the formation of The Robotics Corridor educational initiative, to the opening of roboworld™, Pittsburgh has been at the forefront of robotics education, development, and public interaction.(2)” sources: {1, 2}

Not only does the exhibit sound fantastic, but I highly recommend checking out the site too! For example, as a part of the RoboWorld exhibit, the museum has created a fun website to entertain and educate entitled  RobotTRUTH.com! There you can do lots of cool things, including:

• Take a quiz to determine your Robo IQ.
• Watch interfacing robo-puppies.
• Convert your secret messages to binary code! For example:

01001001001000000111011101100001011011100111010000100000011

10100011011110010000001100111011011110010000100100000010010

000110110101101101001011000010000001101001011101000010011101

110011001000000110111101101110011011000111100100100000001110

000010000001101000011011110111010101110010011100110010000001

10000101110111011000010111100100100000000011010000101001100

010011110010010000001100011011000010111001000100001

Thought the iRobot Roombas were only good for collecting dust bunnies? Think again! At MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intellgence Laboratory (CSAIL for short), Roombas have been reimagined so that they now can collect fruit! These are no ordinary Roombas, though. As you can see above, they have been severely tinkered with to produce the above gardening robot.  At this amazing garden, a protype for a larger and more comprehensively autonomous greenhouse, the robots can water and polinate plants, locate and gather the fruit, and most amazing of all, respond to requests from the plants. Yes, I didn’t mistype: the plants can actually communicate to the robots!

“Networked sensors help the plants ‘request’ water or nutrients from their robotic gardeners… giving each plant the ability to monitor and broadcast its own physical state allows the robots to distribute resources and care on demand.” source

We may be looking at the garden of the future! But we’d better not tell any of this to Meticulor. He might get jealous.

One of the participants from the first session of our first workshop was unable to attend the second session. We crunched respective calendars and arranged a time to meet with him independently so that he could finish his bot, name it and write a story for all of you to enjoy! We would like to point out that this young man also chose the orangutan model of the Jungle Robot to build, and in regard to the race, very well could have taken home the gold himself. We present his story:

“No, Robot. Come Back.”

“No, robot. Come back,” I said.  Boom! All of a sudden the robot went into hyper drive and started to fly.  It was my Jungle Robot (his name was Bob) that flew away. Good thing I had a spare one (his name was Fred). I turned Fred on and then I clapped. Boom! Fred went into hyper drive and started to follow the Bob robot. We were so close to catching Bob until we went into outer space. Bob hit an asteroid and exploded into many different pieces. Since I was right behind him, I went straight through the explosion and hit the same asteroid that Bob hit. Then Fred exploded right under me just like Bob did. I was stuck in outer space with nothing but a screwdriver and the remains of Bob and Fred. There was only one thing to do: put them back together. I pulled out my handy-dandy instruction guide and followed the instructions piece by piece. There was only one problem: the batteries had exploded, so I pulled out my cell phone and called NASA. They eventually brought a space shuttle over to where I was using my GPS location. Good thing they had batteries with them, but there was only one problem: they wanted money for the batteries. Since I did not have money with me I asked them to fly me back to my house and I would pay them extra. They said ok, and they flew me back home. I paid them, got the batteries, and put the batteries back into Bob in Fred.  That taught Bob a lesson not to run away, and Fred also learned a lesson: to be more careful when chasing after Bob.  After all that, they did not use their life long lessons ever in their life so this was pretty much not useful to anyone except for me.

THE END

The robot named Madeline is pictured above. She is one of the robots currently being studied at Vassar College’s labs to further students’ understanding of the kind of evolution that took place over 500 million years ago. By mimicking subtle changes in the animal’s skeletal structure or appendages, the students are observing which changes are working better in a simulated predator/prey environment, and thus modeling the process of natural selection.

Take a moment to consider how fascinating this use of robotics is. There has hitherto been no way to study these long extinct creatures accurately with respect to physical changes. Computer simulation programs are fallible, and do not afford the researcher the chance to observe the results. Robotics changes all of that! The popularity of this method of biological simulation in the study of evolution is becoming widespread as the science of robotics progresses because the movement of robots is becoming increasingly organic and fine-tunable.

“At Harvard University, George Lauder, professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, studies fish locomotion with the aid of robotic fins. He says scientists are not trying to build spitting images of animals, but rather to mimic certain characteristics – a fin or a spinal column – to study how they work. Scientists then alter that characteristic to see how it affects performance…’The thing about robots is, robots can’t violate the laws of physics,’ he said. ‘A computer program can.’ Lauder said there’s no substitute for building a device that can replicate the minutely complex features of an animal. He expects the rise of robots in biological research to accelerate as more advances are made.” source

Check out this video to see the Vassar College students at work! 

For our workshop finale, we sat down and recorded the robot stories we had come up with so that they could be treasured by future generations. For your reading pleasure, we have posted them!

Stories One and Two:

A Collaborative Story Told From Two Perspectives:

The Battle of B.O.B. and B.O.L.T.

Story One:

BATTLE OF THE BOTS!

B.O.B. is about the size of a box of Lou Malnati’s Pizza, and is 8 tons. B.O.B stands for Botox On Bubble. He was on the Sears Tower and a thief name BBF, which stands for Babyface, was forcing B.O.B. to jump off! Luckily he had  a gun. He had a F-15 magnum so BBF was about to jump on B.O.B. but B.O.B. shot BBF and BBF fell off the Sears Tower! But B.O.B. was so dumb that he jumped off the Sears Tower and broke 43 screws ! He was lucky that the Sears Tower is only the 2^nd biggest tower in the world! Then, the evil  B.O.L.T., which stands for Berserk Omega Ludicrous Terror, came and destroyed the city! But B.O.B. blew him up! How, you ask, do I know. The battle ended in 999,999,999,999,999 centuries! So B.O.L.T. jumped to Chicago but before he was in New York City and he was planning to destroy Chicago! B.O.B. impaled him in the head and B.O.L.T. shot his rocket launcher at B.O.B., knocked him out and set him on fire. But B.O.B. is fireproof! Then, B.O.B. jumped on him! In the end, B.O.L.T. died!

THE END

Story Two:

THE DEATH OF MEGA ROBOT B.O.L.T

Once there was a robot named B.O.L.T.  (Berserk Omega Ludicrous Terror). B.O.L.T. had a flamethrower on his left arm, a rocket launcher on his right arm and a jetpack on his back. B.O.L.T. was a 300 foot tall robot that weighed 2,000 pounds. One day B.O.L.T. went on a RAMPAGE in New York City, knocking down buildings, throwing around cars and lighting things on fire with his flamethrower. After he was done destroying the city, he flies to Chicago (because he wanted to destroy a different city). When he gets there he sees B.O.B. (the other robot), which stands for Buttocks On Bubbles. B.O.L.T. shoots him with one of his rockets. Then B.O.B. gets knocked out! While he is knocked out, B.O.L.T. shoots B.O.B with his flamethrower. But B.O.B. is FIREPROOF! B.O.B. wakes up and POW! He kills B.O.L.T. 

THE END

Story Three:

The Amazing Adventures of

Messenger Robot

Message Robot is an amazing robot, who lives in the jungle and delivers messages to the rulers of the Jungle. It is an awesome job because he gets to tell all his clan mates about the secrets of the almighty rulers. One of the rulers is the evil Dictator Man. Dictator man controlled the south quadrant of the jungle. The good king Servillius controlled the northern quadrant of the jungle. Urso controlled the eastern hemisphere of the jungle. Jerome controlled the western part of the jungle. All of the kings have special powers Messenger told his friends. Dictator Man can summon the souls of the lost monkey kings or the dead monkey kings. Servillius could heal anyone and even himself. Urso could call upon the bears of the jungle to attack his enemies. His downfall is that he can only use his power once in a while. He only had so much power and became very weak after every use. Jerome had small amount of all of the others powers. He could summon a single bear. Or he could call a platoon of monkey warriors to the rescue. He could heal minor wounds of his army men. He was also very wise. He was smarter than the smartest elder. He knew how to avoid war that way he didn’t lose men. But one day Servillius and Urso teamed up to drive Dictator Man out of the jungle. Jerome knew that they needed all of the directions of the jungle to keep the balance equal.

I am Message Robot.

Jerome told me to go tell Dictator Man that help was on the way. As I climbed my vine to the Dictator Man’s side of the jungle I saw A platoon of monkeys and a giant bear. When I got to the battle I saw Dictator Man with many injuries. They were all small but he looked very bad. Then I climb down to inform Dictator Man on our current status. He tells me that he does not need our sympathy but he will accept it for now. He also states that he will owe us nothing after the battle is over. He also says thank you and I know that this is the last time he will ever say this to me. Then I see Jerome. He comes right towards and then I blank out for just a second. When I wake up Dictator Man is glowing and his wounds are gone. Next I must leave. I have to honor both sides of the jungle so I must not fight in this battle. I go and watch the results of the battle from a nearby tree. Just then I see Urso fall from atop his bear liege. I watch the bears retreat and soon Dictator Man and Jerome are fighting Servillius. Servillius’s staff is no match for Dictator Man’s scythe and Jerome’s poison darts and boomerangs o death. The boomerangs have tips as sharp as knives. Soon Servillius’s troops are retreating too. Dictator Man looks like he will chase after but Jerome whispers something too him and he stays back. I go back to my home in the city where all are welcome and now I am telling you what happened just this very moment.

The End

Story Four:

The War Against One Entity:

Numerous Men Lost

Its June 7 , 1997. A pilot is flying in the air at about 19,000 feet. This pilot’s name is Rigo Rican. His mission was to find the source of the so-called monster, sky beast. He wasn’t given a lot of information only that he was to find this creature (if it even existed)and destroy it. His captain’s name is agent 997. So far he has had no problem flying his group of 19 to the remote forbidden country of Pyutan. Two hours pass and he finally lands on the island.  He and his crew go deep into the jungle they see broken trees everywhere “there must have been a huge hurricane before we came” says one of the men when all of a sudden they hear a crack one man turns around and shoots a blur of bullets, it slices through several trees and then blows up. (You may think there is not a gun that has been invented which the bullets blow up after shot. Well, there is, and for your information the story I’m telling you is classified and most of the guns and people don’t even exist …..at least not in your world.) Anyway, back to my story, the men all turn to their left were they heard the crack from, they wait for the so-called monster to appear but to their surprise it’s light walking. All of a sudden, a small robot comes out from the forest. The men start laughing recognizing their threat is a worthless piece of metal. ”Ha, ha this is our little threat?” says one man kicking the bot back into the woods. “I wonder where it came from?” says another man. They all turn around, proceeding with their search, and one man goes into the bushes. “I think I’m going to bring this home for my little girl,” he says, and he goes a couple of feet into the jungle. The team waits for him a couple of feet away when all of a sudden they hear a blood curdling scream: “AAAAAHHHHH!”. Then, they hear a snap of bones and flesh, and then nothing. Absolutely nothing….just silence. They look up, and they have to pull back their head all the way up to just see the torso of the giant robot. They stand frozen, waiting for the robot to step on them. One man hears the sound of water flowing just to find out how his partner peed  on himself out of fear. The robot reaches down and picks up the man who had kicked him when little, and looks the man right in the eyes. All of a sudden, the robot’s eyes turn red. The solider starts shaking when out of nowhere the man blows up sending blood, guts, and pieces of brain all over the team. One man starts running, and as he runs the robot sees him and roars. The man goes 500 over the jungle and fall to a bloody death. None of the men move for fear the same thing happening to them. Finally, one man points up towards the robot and just starts unloading on it. The rest follow suit.

To be continued…

The second session of our first workshop was a resounding blast that could be heard well into DuPage County. It was held at 826CHI’s The Boring Store, and consisted mostly of creating identities for our new robot friends. As you can see above, the finishing touches were added to the beloved bots first, and our participants then elaborated on what kind of robot his was and how it interacted with the world. Finally, they composed stories about their bots in both collaborative and solo mode. Read on to find out more about this raucous good time!

Ultimate personalization! We used markers, stickers and our imaginations to decorate our bots. They were given names and a sense of style, both characteristics and quirks, and then we forged a humanoid-to-robot relationship based on the fantastic reaches of our mental landscapes.

As all of our creative powers were being utilized collectively, we bonded with our bots on an astral level. Needless to say, it didn’t take long to calicify a long and lasting friendship between man and machine. Now it’s time to rally the troops!

The bots were gathered and tested alongside one another, and a kind of impromptu race was initiated. Here are the results: the Gorilla Jungle Robots were mostly neck-to-neck most races, the winner inevitably being the owner who could clap or snap at his robot’s sensor the most consistently so as to activate it immediately upon the lapsing of its 5 second action sequence. However, one participant’s robot DID take the gold in every race, and for a very good reason.

This workshop participant chose the Oragutan Jungle Bot variation, and as we found out, it moves much more quickly realtive to the ground-bound bots, and it can cover a heck of a lot more distance per active sprint than the Gorilla Jungle Bot can! In fact, this robot’s speed was the inspiration for its creator’s story. The writings are so incredible, we cannot wait to share them with you! Keep an eye out for our upcoming post “Botiful Beginnings- Part 3″, where we will post the stories written (with the consent of the authors, of course)!

Our first workshop was a blast! These guys were not merely participants in the Bots 4 Tots program; they made history by being the first ever group that we’ve hosted! Here we are in front of the workshop room, located in the back of the Robot City Workshop,  where all the building took place that fateful Saturday the 16th of May, 2009. Don, our volunteer helper Casey (a good friend of ours- pictured next to me, behind the kids, above) and I were so delighted to work with the kids, and not to mention impressed with how quickly they took ownership of the project! The most important part of the experience was in the fun and discovery of learning and building!

When we arrived, Don Casey and I were welcomed by Kevin of Robot City Workshop’s rendition of our logo (above)! Greg Gilla welcomed us and made sure that everything was in place for our monumental undertaking, and then our new friends and fellow roboticists, the workshop participants, started arriving!

After a brief look at the instructions, we fielded some questions about robots and electronics. The PC Board was a thing of mystery as the kids first took it out of the box, but after a quick breakdown of what a circuit is and how electricity makes its way through the board, we were all a little more familiar with the goings on of our respective robot’s brains. We did a preliminary test, attaching the sensor, the motor, and the battery pack to the PCB to be certain that each one was working within specified parameters before venturing forth into the great unknown!

Getting right to work, we started with the locomotive innards- the gearbox! Don and I were available for questions and help as Casey sat at the end of the table and built his own Jungle Robot for the first time alongside the kids. At first the kids seemed to be expecting a step by step breakdown, but we asked them all to look over the instructions, inspect the elements of the first task, and try it once themselves. Were we ever impressed to find that everyone was successful on his own, without any hand-holding at all! All we had to do was go around and make sure everything looked right with the gear boxes before moving on! We all tested our gearboxes in unison, all with great success, and then continued to assemble the body of the bot around it!

It was only a hop, skip and a jump from there to the assembly of the body. I took over the documentation of the workshop as it progressed, the kids busily buzzing away and testing the motors after the completion of each major step. As they made sure the axle was turning through the body encasement, I could see each one of them applying the understanding that he had just gained of the PCB and the motor with the way the legs were going to be attached. Exclamations of enlightenment were abound! Don rapped with the kids about the finer points of tapping screws and sockets, and then before we knew it, heads were being attached!

We’ll be finishing up our first workshop this coming Friday (the 22nd of May, 2009), at 826CHI’s  The Boring Store, where the kids will put the finishing touches on their robots. We’ll be talking  about what was learned through the workshop, and writing about the experience, and celebrating a job well done! Look forward to pictures, writings, and the announcement of our second workshop this summer!

Saturday, Saturday, Saturday! That’s right, this Saturday is Bots 4 Tots’s first workshop of the summer, hosted jointly by Bots 4 Tots and 826CHI’s The Boring Store! At 1PM on Saturday the 16th, five children will be coming to the Robot City Workshop to build their own robots! Since this is our first workshop, Don and I took a moment this week to assemble the kits ourselves so that we can best aid the kids when/if they need a little guidance. See us at work after the jump!

The inaugural bot was a ton of fun to put together! We have no doubt that the kids will love it, and through assembling it, gain an awareness of the integral mechanics of toys like it. From testing the PC board, motor and sensor to securing the final screw, it’s great fun and a wonderful starting point to get kids ages 10-15 interested in further projects!

We are looking forward to such fascinating questions as “What in the heck is this?!”. Seriously, Don and I are giddy with excitement for a participant to ask us what a capacitor (“this thing”) or a resistor (“that thing”) is this weekend, or to ask about the plus and minus signs next to the black and red wires. But don’t get me wrong, we’re not going to try and teach every child in attendance everything about electronics in one sitting. We are going to introduce the concept behind the sensor, the PC board, the motor and the power source before we begin building, of course, but we want them to determine the pace of learning beyond that. We will be happy to talk the kids’ ears off if they are interested and want to know more than just the basics! It’s all about the kids and what they will want individually. We understand that some of them may want to do it themselves, and effectively tell us to buzz off. That’s cool! Or some might want every little bit explained and demonstrated- a hands on approach works best for some. I know it does for me! Some might fly through the exercise while others might work more slowly and steadily. However each child will approach the building of his or her bot is great; we want him or her to be in control of defining the experience.

We cannot wait to post all sorts of pictures of the kids’ discovery process, of little minds expanding and working, and the smiles of achievement! And because this, our first workshop of the summer, is a special cooperative effort between B4T and 826CHI, it will have the added bonus of a second session: a writing workshop held the following week at The Boring Store in which the kids will explore the personalities of their robots and place them in settings, imaginary or real, while overcoming fantastic hurdles! 

Stay tuned for pictures from our first workshop next week, and stories and pictures from the kids the week after that!

RoboGames invites the best minds from around the world to compete in over 70 different events. Combat robots, walking humanoids, soccer bots, sumo bots, and even androids that do kung-fu. Some robots are autonomous, some are remote controlled – but they’re all cool! As an open event, anyone can compete – this means you.

This year the event is in San Francisco, June 12-14.

Alexis is actually from San Francisco – which proves a long running theory I have that she may actually be a robot. Which is cool. Like, seriously cool.

Go check it out!