Local High Schoolers Get a Taste for Robotics During Carnegie Mellon Tour

Susie Cribbs

In a labyrinth deep in the heart of Oakland, a dozen high school students stand surrounded by a hodge-podge of mechanical oddities. To the left, a spider-like contraption extends nearly to the ceiling and grunts and groans as hydraulics propel it up and down. A dune buggy outfitted with solar panels hangs on a nearby wall, and what looks like a souped-up ATV rests just to the right.


But this mad-scientist collection of gizmos isn't what's holding the attention of these high school students. They're focused on a flat-screen monitor showing two HUMMERs racing across the desert. "Cool"s and "awesome"s reverberate off the concrete floors and walls. They've seen HUMMERs before, but never quite like this. Neither has a driver, yet they both recently finished a 131-mile race across the Mojave Desert.

Nestled in the basement of Carnegie Mellon's Newell-Simon Hall, the High Bay area, as it's called, houses some of the most cutting-edge robotics research in the world. That dune buggy is Hyperion, a solar-powered robot that reasons about its resources and tracks the sun to optimize energy. The spider is really part of the TRESTLE project, which aims to create robots that can work together to construct things in outer space. The ATV is Nomad, which found and classified indigenous meteorites and terrestrial rocks in Antarctica a few yeas ago. And those HUMMERs? They're the Red Team's autonomous racers, Sandstorm and H1ghlander.

For once, though, the story isn't about these Carnegie Mellon robots. It's about those kids standing in the High Bay. They're part of Pittsburgh FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology) Robotics. And tonight is their reward for a year of hard work, dedication and accomplishment.

Founded in 1989 by inventor Dean Kamen, FIRST is a multinational non-profit organization that aims to make science, math, engineering and technology as cool for kids as sports are today. The organization sponsors annual competitions and provides scholarships for talented high school students.

With support from the Heinz Endowments, the Pittsburgh FIRST Robotics competition challenges teams from different high schools across the region to build a robot in a six-week timeframe using a standard kit of parts. Teams are rewarded for excellence in design, team spirit, gracious professionalism and maturity, and the ability to overcome obstacles. Scoring the most points is a secondary goal. The winner moves on to a national competition, which included nearly 1,000 teams last year.


To reward local FIRST teams for their hard work last year, the Heinz Endowments and Franco Harris, pro football Hall of Famer and Pittsburgh FIRST Robotics advisory board chair, recently arranged for the students to experience Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute first-hand. After dinner, Robotics Institute Director Matt Mason gave students and their parents an overview of robotics at Carnegie Mellon. Then Takeo Kanade, the U.A. and Helen Whitaker Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, demonstrated the science behind his EyeVision technology, which gives people the ability to see scenes from multiple camera angles. EveVision made its debut on CBS during Super Bowl XXXV.

After Kanade's demonstration, students were divided into groups and treated to a "best of" tour of Carnegie Mellon's robotics accomplishments. In addition to TRESTLE, Nomad, Hyperion and the Red Team, students saw projects like snakebot, which uses beveled gears to propel it through places where humans can't easily go; the Personal Exploration Rover (PER), based largely on the Mars rover; the sonic flashlight, a real-time ultrasound scan that enables doctors to look directly beneath the body's surface as they operate; and Carnegie Mellon's soccer-playing AIBO robot dogs.

Harris said he hoped that students would benefit from the experience in multiple ways.

"We brought them here to expose them to the college, to the university atmosphere," he said. "Can Carnegie Mellon inspire them to reach beyond their current thinking? That's the main goal."

"This event also allowed students from different areas to meet," Harris said. "We want them to have more interaction, to talk to each other. If this is a field that they're really interested in, we want them to have friends in the field. The more people they can be exposed to and talk to, the larger their interest can be in this area."

Judging from the reactions of both students and their teachers, Harris and FIRST hit the nail on the head.

"This was just super," said McKeesport High School and Technology Center teacher Mike Dischner. "I wish I could bring all the kids down. …It was more than I expected."


Michael Scarpaci, a robotics and engineering teacher at North Hills High School, agreed with Dischner's assessment. "This far exceeded my expectations," he said. "What we saw broadens the notion of what they can do with robotics and engineering."

Students were just as impressed as their teachers. "The coordination of the soccer robots was incredible," said Max Salley, a senior at North Hills High School. "How it senses the world is incredible. Everything they use to perceive the world around them is so different, but it all works."

"What happened tonight was everything I could have hoped for," Harris said. "It was interesting to see the future and the endless possibilities. A lot of things start very small and before you know it, people keep developing and projects evolve. Before too long, some wonderful things are going to happen."

Pittsburgh FIRST Robotics hopes that one of those wonderful things will be high school students taking an interest in attending a university like Carnegie Mellon.

"The reason for this was to have students in the Pittsburgh region start to see another level of robotics," Harris said. "Can this inspire their imagination, inspire their dreams? We have one of the finest—if not THE finest—institution in robotics in the world. We have to let our kids in this region realize that. And start to dream and imagine that maybe one day they can do wonderful things."

When asked what he thought he might be doing after graduation, one high school senior answered with a smile, "Hopefully coming to Carnegie Mellon."

That would be a wonderful thing.

Related Links:
Robotics Institute
Pittsburgh FIRST Robotics
Pittsburgh TRESTLE
Hyperion
Nomad
Red Team