| Robotic contest is geared toward inspiring students
To the untrained eye, the robots loosed on the arena floor seemed locked in a chaotic death struggle that was equal parts Dodge 'Em Cars and carnival contest. In reality, yesterday's colorful competition among high school teams from across California and the West was a collaborative clash designed to inspire and encourage students to pursue technology and engineering in college and careers. For the past 15 years, high school students from across the nation and several foreign countries have formed teams, secured sponsors and designed, built and operated robots to compete for recognition and, ultimately, college scholarships. It's all part of the FIRST Robotics Competition; the acronym means "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology." "This encourages kids by engaging them in something that is challenging, exciting and really fun," said Jon Karanopoulos, who teaches industrial arts and auto shop at San Diego High School downtown.
13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education
The 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED 2007) is in an ongoing series of biennial international conferences for top quality research in cognitive science and intelligent systems for educational computing applications. The conference thus provides opportunities for the cross-fertilization of information and ideas from researchers in the many fields that make up this interdisciplinary research area, including: artificial intelligence, other areas of computer science, cognitive science, education, learning sciences, educational technology, psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and the many domain-specific areas for which AIED systems have been designed and built. TOPICS The technical program focuses on research linking theory and technology from artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and computer science with theory and practice from education and social science.
Robotic trio wins 'Super Bowl of Smarts'
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- After six weeks of strategy and sweat, a coalition of high school teams from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Nevada took the top prize at the FIRST Robotics competition, otherwise known as the "Superbowl of Smarts." Bobcat Robotics from South Windsor, Connecticut, Highrollers from Las Vegas, Nevada, and Gompei and the HERD from Worcester, Massachusetts, won before thousands of screaming high-school participants. "It was absolutely amazing. We had our ups and downs, but for the most part our robot performed flawlessly," said Colin Roddy of the Worcester team. "We didn't expect to win at first, but it got better as the matches progressed," said Christopher Jelly from the Bobcat Robotics team. A good arm is golden for a robot as well as a baseball pitcher.
Robotic Fleas Spring into Action
An autonomous robotic flea has been developed that is capable of jumping nearly 30 times its height, thanks to what is arguably the world's smallest rubber band. Swarms of such robots could eventually be used to create networks of distributed sensors for detecting chemicals or for military-surveillance purposes, says Sarah Bergbreiter, an electrical engineer at University of California, Berkeley, who developed the robots. The idea is that stretching a silicone rubber band just nine microns thick can enable these microrobotic devices to move by catapulting themselves into the air. Early tests show that the solar-powered bots can store enough energy to make a 7-millimeter robot jump 200 millimeters high. This flealike ballistic jumping would enable these sensors to be mobile, covering relatively large distances and overcoming obstacles that would normally be a major problem for micrometer-sized bots, says Bergbreiter.
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