MCS, Physics Profs Get Robotics Grant

Mike Hvidsten and Tom Huber from the MCS and Phsyics Departments just got a very nice grant from Sun Microsystems that will allow the two of them to modernize the Robotics Workshop course, which they will be team teaching in January of 2008. Sun is providing 11 SunSPOT development systems, valued at a total of $6,050, to allow students to build robots that they program in Java. Huber and Hvidsten have taught the popular Robotics Workshop using other control computers in recent years (as did Hailperin in the courses’s earliest incarnations). As a result of Sun’s grant, they will not only be able to modernize the course, but also to enlarge it to better meet student demand; this year, they will serve 8 teams of 3 students each. Each team will use the month of January to develop a project of their own choosing as well as a robot to enter into the final classwide competition (something like Lego Sumo). The students will join the professors in making their designs and programs avaiable for others to use.