Cafe

What is a robot?

According to Dr. Orlando Hernandez, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), “A true robot has to be able to do things by itself, not just getting commands from some other influence, but able to figure something about the environment around it, and then make some type of intelligent decision.”

It takes many people to build a robot. Dr. Andrea Salgian, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at TCNJ, explained that in addition to computer scientists, electrical, mechanical, and computer engineers work together to create robots.

The College of New Jersey held its first robotics camp from July 14 through July 17,2008. The camp had 13 students working in groups of two or three. Students had a choice of building their own robots or building one together with their partner(s).

Students had to meet certain requirements in order to be selected for the camp. The requirements included taking a pre-calculus course and being in the top ten percent of their high school class. Dr. Hernandez said that even though his website stated that the students had to be high school seniors, several juniors also attended the camp. Dr. Hernandez explained that this is a trial for students to see if they would want to enter the field of engineering or robotics.

Dr. Hernandez said that the students showed enthusiasm about their work, choosing to work on their robots even when other fun activities were offered. He explained, “If they would rather build a robot than watch a movie or eat pizza, we really have something here.”

Dr. Hernandez and several students (Kaitlin Chou, Nara Kim, and Ryan Balthazar) all said they would love to see the camp expand. Dr. Hernandez explained, “I just think that there is a lot if potential to grow the camp in terms of the number of students and the length of it. So, I hope that in the future we can just bring more students, hopefully for even a longer period [of time]...give an option of a week or maybe some will do two weeks. So, the second week will be a little more advanced and some will just want to come the second week if they really have a lot of experience.”

Dr. Hernandez and the students both said that the hardest thing about the camp was to learn the computer language used to program the robots, because some kids didn't know the language at all and had to learn it in only in one week. On the other hand, some students who had attended other camps already knew the language and were ahead of the game.

In this camp, the students didn't just have to build robots, but had to compete as well. The competition consisted of two parts. First, the students had to build their robots. Then the robots had to make it to the center of a wooden maze. If more than one robot was able to make it to the center of the maze, then the tiebreaking factor was the amount of time taken to make it to the center.

The competition took place on July 17,2008, at 9:00 a.m. Every winner received a medal. Third place went to Pace Nalbone! Second place was awarded to Ryan Balthazar and Kaitlin Chou! Kevin Touhey and Chris D’italia won first place! Their hard work definitely paid off.

In his final statement of the interview, Dr. Hernandez pointed out the importance of teamwork. “The most interesting ones [robots] were from kids who decided to team up and just focus their collective effort in building one robot. So even though that’s a small data point, it does present some light on the importance and relevance of teamwork in technology and anything”.

media credit:  the beast And Hibofusion7