R-MA Aerospace Instructor MSgt Stephen Pederson supervised a robotics intramural this past fall. It is an activity he has offered before, but it didn’t take him long to realize that this group was a bit different. “A few weeks in, I realized these guys were bored,” he said. “I had to step it up and challenge them.”
That challenge came in the programming of the robots–instead of giving the robots a set of pre-determined commands, the students had to program the robots to receive commands using Bluetooth technology. “It’s somewhat advanced material, and these guys are doing it as freshmen and sophomores,” MSgt Pederson noted.
The students estimated that they had put 35 to 40 hours of work into building and programming the robots since the start of the school year. Freshman Nathan Stewart and MSgt Pederson took a few moments to share what the students had done this fall, with Nathan showing off not just his robot, but explaining a bit of the programming as well.