Sargent students treated to robot workshop (11-22-05)
Sarah Keith, Jenna Valdez, and Aaron Hart attempt to program an ERI Robotic Unit.
Sargent High School science students were treated to a robot workshop by Adams State College Professor of Physics, Dr. Randy Emmons, in October.
"I am using the $51,000 US Army grant received this fall to expose high school students to computer science," Emmons said.
Emmons brought the necessary equipment to Sargent High School teachers Michelle Thompson, earth science and math, and Ronna Cochran's, biology, anatomy, and technology, science classroom. Interested science students spent most of the afternoon building simple robots.
Kendra Sanderson and Erica Leite-Da Silva receive help from Emmons.
"Everyone worked in pairs," Emmons said. "They all had a laptop computer, wires, boards, and batteries to hook up lights to a microprocessor. The next step was to program the microprocessor to blink the lights in a pattern."
Sophomores Sarah Keith and Jenna Valdez worked together. They attended the Science, Mathematics, and Technology Day held at Adams State during Autumn @ Adams in early October.
"We both became interested in the robots at the college," Keith said.
"It wasn't as difficult as we thought it would be," Valdez said.
"It isn't just for boys," Keith said.
"They used Parallax Basic Stamps. Students programmed the Basic Stamps microprocessors by modifying existing code," said Emmons. "This approach allowed students to use the microprocessors to turn on or off LEDs and input signals via push button switches."
Emmons purchased a number of ERI Robotic Units and accessory packs, Dell Latitude D400 Notebooks, NX-1000 development boards, and CMU cam Vision Systems; he also bought 35 BS2-1C Basic Stamp microprocessors with the grant money.
"The ERI units are most similar to the R2D2 character of the Star Wars movies," said Emmons. "You can program it to know voice recognition and it has a built in camera. The programmer can send the ERI down the hall to an office and it can tell the occupant that they are needed down the hall. All of that is possible with the correct programming."
He lent one of the ERI units to Keith and Valdez when they visited the campus for SMT Day. They spent the next two weeks working on programming the robot to recognize an object and a person and bring the object to the individual.
Keith and Valdez recruited Aaron Hart to help them.
"Using the camera mounted on the top of the robot we photographed a person and a bottle of soda," said Hart. "We programmed the robot to go over to a soda, pick it up and bring the soda to me."
Their attempts in the classroom weren't successful, although Hart said he was able to get it to work once at his home.
Keith, Valdez and Hart said they were interested in computer science.
"There is a huge job market for computer science and engineering," Emmons said.
By Linda Relyea
