Robotics at the National Robotics Engineering Center
Posted by Lloyd MitchellThis year, through the Virginia Birdsall Faculty Professional Development grant, I was able to attend an exclusive Robotics course for educators held at Carnegie Mellon’s research facility in the heart of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nestled along the Allegheny River, an 1800’s warehouse converted to house Robotics research has been home to CMU’s program for the last 50 years. This course spent the week looking at Robotics through both the eyes of an educator and also of a student. We opened with a discussion of defining what a robot is and found that we are surrounded by more robots that most people realize.
Working with educators from all over the world, we worked on complex problems utilizing the concept of the SPA (Sense-Plan-Act), often discussing the pedagogy of robotics and the cross-curricular application of using robotics in the classroom. Through the use of extensive math and applying skills learned, we learned to apply precise calculations to the robot to travel precise distances to within 2 centimeters. The final day was spent reviewing more complex applications of robotics and transforming the robot from understanding simple commands and calculations to utilizing logic to make decisions every 1000th of a second. This accuracy allowed the robot to sense objects in front of it and react as soon as it was moved. All of this was related to how we make decisions as humans and how robotics can replace human work in situations where work environments are not safe.
During the course, a special tour of the facility and the various projects that have been worked on there was given to our group of educators. Projects from the original rover designed in the 60’s for NASA to several ongoing projects for developing unmanned tractors for John Deere to spray orange trees in Florida during the night to protect them from insects that damage the crops were among the projects we saw. Many projects are developed in the facility for the government as well as projects for the shipping industry to clean the barnicles off of major oil tankers in a fraction of the time that it can be done by man. This part of the course was very interesting to see first hand.
This course will help us to take robotics, which has become a strong part of the technology curriculum here at Unquowa, to the next level. The city of Pittsburgh offered a lot of history to take in during my spare time that enriched my experience on this trip, and I cannot wait to bring this new knowledge back to my technology and social studies classes!
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