This course will teach the joys of robotics and renewable energy.  Students will be taught the basics of robotic design, programing, and solar power energy.

At the conclusion of the workshop students will know:

• Basic robotic design
• basic construction techniques
• What are renewable and non-renewable resources
• How solar power works

Students will design and construct robots that see, speak, feel and move.  Students will interact with an advanced programmable micro-controller, servo motors and smart sensors.

Students will compete in teams and perform a number of challenges.

After the workshop each student should have a basic understanding of:

• Programming
• Gears
• Power supplies
• Ultrasonic senors, touch sensors, color sensors, etc.

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In the weeks following the explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig on 20 April, a dozen robots the size of moving vans descended into the Gulf of Mexico. Each tethered to a ship by a combination electrical and optical cable, the remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) formed a fleet of unprecedented size…

“No one’s ever seen anything like this before—that many ROVs simultaneously working on one project,” says Tyler Schilling, president and CEO of Schilling Robotics, based in Davis, Calif., which manufactured four of the ROVs in the Gulf and all the robots’ manipulator arms. But if predictions about the growth of deep-water drilling prove accurate, big fleets of robots will become the norm, and with that will come the need for much better automation.
Experts mostly agree that the ROVs in the Gulf have carried out their tasks with impressive success…

…”ROVs will be called on to do more varied tasks and a greater proportion of them,” Schilling says. They will likely work in larger numbers and in closer proximity, not unlike the congested operation unfolding around BP’s blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico.

Public Perception of Robots

As with many other technological discoveries, perception in the media has greatly affected their acceptance into the public. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the perception of robots overshadowed the reality of their abilities. The source of this problem is that the fantastical abilities of fictional robots overshadow the capability of actual robots.

This all began around the 18th century when clockwork automatons introduced the idea of a “metal man” who could do what humans can do, to the public.  From the beginning public opinion was divided. Some people thought that a “metal man” could make their lives easier by doing the dangerous or repetitive tasks for them.  Others disliked the idea, fearing that metal men would take over jobs that people live on.

For the majority of the twentieth century, most robots were portrayed as villains rather than kind and sympathetic.  Most fictional robots were seen as uncontrollable beings that wanted to cause mass destruction.  Author Isaac Asimov portrayed robots in a more positive way showing that they contained emotions and could sympathize with humans.

Our country is falling behind

• In 2009, just 34 percent of U.S. 8^th graders were rated proficient or higher in a national math assessment, and more than one in four scored below the basic level.
• In an international exam given in 2006, U.S. high school students ranked 21^st out of 30 industrialized nations in science and 25^th in math.
• Only 43 percent of U.S. high school graduates in 2010 were ready for college work in math and 29 percent were ready in science.

STEM is the future.

• STEM education is an economic imperative.
• Did you know that technological innovation accounted for almost half of U.S. economic growth over the past 50 years
• Almost all of the 30 fastest-growing occupations in the next decade will require at least some background in STEM.
• STEM literacy is critical because it has a profound and growing impact on our day-to-day lives.

A literate nation not only reads. It computes, investigates and innovates.