Subject/Content: This course will provide the student the opportunity to be both introduced to the fundamentals of engineering and immersed in a robotics experience that will serve as an exciting, popular vehicle for the delivery of those fundamentals. While the focus will be on robotics, the course will introduce the student to the various engineering disciplines and teach him or her some engineering fundamentals. These basic engineering topics will include the engineering design process, teamworking skills, engineering drawing and communications, elements of problem solving with computers, simple programming elements and logic, and engineering professionalism and ethics. Approximately 60% of the available time will be spent with the students in 2- or 3-person teams in the hands-on activities of designing, building, programming, and testing small autonomous robots made from the LEGO™ Mindstorms NXT System kits. The other portion of the time will be spent on learning engineering fundamentals, touring on-campus University laboratories, doing robotics research, and developing and practicing engineering skills. An introduction to solid modeling and working with the Autodesk™ Inventor computer-aided design application will be included. An interactive bridge-building computer application will also be introduced.
Age/Grade level: high school students currently enrolled in the 9th, 10th, or 11th grade.
Type: — week long
Length of program: July 11-16, 2010
Cost: $295
Financial aid?: No
What does the program cover: Building and Testing LEGO Robots, Team Problem Solving, Engineering Problems & Challenges, Hands-On Laboratory Exercises, Computer-Aided Design & Software, Modeling, Team Project Design & Build, Engineering Design & Experimentation, Engineering Laboratory Tours