The following photos are from the Science Festival I took the boys to this Monday past (11-APR-2005). We entered four total robots, three in each of the Mine Sweeping and the Maze contests. Mine Sweeping is where the robot attempts to trip all of the mouse traps in the arena. Maze is an exercise where the robot navigates from one end of the maze to the other. Each event had an additional robot entered by Bill Bechtel's students.

Bill Bechtel is a 8th grade science teacher at Yellow Breeches Middle School near Carlisle. He is developing a robotics curriculum, and I had the opportunity to test drive it with the older boys. I originally made contact with Bechtel as I was looking for an alternative to the Sunday Abington fire fighting robot competition; a more local robot club PennBots was listed as hosting a regional fire fighting contest. Bechtel is the current president of PennBots. Pennbots is currently into remote-controlled, combat robots, where my interest lies in autonomous, problem solving, robots. On 9-APR-2005, us boys visited a PennBots competition--you can see us in some of the photos--where we test drove a Maze Solving robot and an Mine Sweeping robot.

Bechtel has graciously provided the photos below of the 11-APR-2005 Science Festival.

This is other entrant in the mine sweeping contest; it won first place. Zachary's entry won second place in this event.

Micah's entry in the mine sweeper. It ended up getting stuck in a corner (due to the sensor placement, not because of it's tail-wheel). You can see which of the mousetraps he succeeded in tripping--they are removed to simulate the mine's crater.

Zachary's entry starting the maze. This is a ball that rolls more-or-less straight until it bumps something, then will roll in a random different direction. It did poorly in the maze, basically rolling back out the entrance once it hit a wall. However, it did quite well in the mine sweeping contest.

My entry in the maze. Unfortunately, due to programming errors and inadequate testing, it got "lost" at the first corner. I entered a different robot, similar to Micah's in the mine sweeper, but it failed so poorly that I did not run it in the second and third trials.

Micah's entry in the maze. This was his mine sweeper with the brushes switched to wheels. The maze is based on 18" squares--e.g., the entry in an 18" opening, with two walls, and the passage to the next "square". The robot is leaving the second "square" and entering the third. Although Micah's robot got stuck when entering the sixth "square", it still won the second place in the contest. In comparison, the first place entry (also by Bechtel's students) made it to the ninth "square", just out of view on the right.

The boys being given their awards. Bechtel is the guy on the left. The guy on the right in the red/black jacket is one of the chaperones that accompanied Bechtel's students to the Science Festival. The man in the back, Kip Bollinger, is the one who organized the Science Festival.

The two boys with their robots and 2nd place certificates. Bechtel's students received the first place awards for the two contests.

Joe Osborne, the developer of the electronics portion of the robot curriculum that Bechtel is developing awarding the boys the door prize, a 14 pound, 1400 piece Merkur (Erector-like) construction set. Merkur is the mechanical basis of the curriculum, and was supporting the Science Festival in this way.

The Science Festival featured other activities, in addition to the robot contests. We took in the Messiah College solar racing boat, the liquid-nitrogen demonstration, and the Martian lecture (which featured 3D pictures of Mars and other things.

Hugs & Kisses from your Son and Grandsons (and brother, nephews, and/or cousins),