Last week I finished teaching the five-day “Hands-On Robotics for Teens” robotics course at Stanford University. As I thought would be the case, the planned robotic sumo event was the highlight of the week. The winning sumo-bot, “Kill-Dozer,” was a treaded vehicle with a slope that had TECHNIC teeth at the end. The design proved to be very effective, enabling it to win even a “king of the hill” round (i.e., pile all the sumo-bots onto the arena and see who lasts the longest).
The students, each of which had a computer with Internet access, also enjoyed creating robots from Dave Parker’s excellent nxtprograms.com website. We built the Catapult, Modular Test Vehicle, Machine Gun, Rattlesnake, and more. Below are some random pictures I took during the week. Besides enjoying the robots, I also enjoyed the nice weather there: a high of 70s during most of the week!
