Robot Arms Make Great Student Projects

Robotic arm (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) - A robotic arm is a type of mechanical arm, usually programmable, with similar functions to a human arm; the arm may be the sum total of the mechanism or may be part of a more complex robot. The links of such a manipulator are connected by joints allowing either rotational motion (such as in an articulated robot) or translational (linear) displacement.^[1][2] The links of the manipulator can be considered to form a kinematic chain. The terminus of the kinematic chain of the manipulator is called the end effector and it is analogous to the human hand.

"...an arm has 3 hinge points: the shoulder, the elbow and the wrist. Because we have these 3 hinge points we can move freely in an area."

Students from Around the World Participate In First-Ever International High School Robotics Competition

FROM NPR: http://www.npr.org/2017/07/17/537754562/students-compete-in-first-ever-international-high-school-robotics-competition

"Science

Students Compete In First-Ever International High School Robotics Competition

July 17, 20174:28 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

Kat Lonsdorf

"The first ever international high school robotics competition is happening in Washington, D.C., this week. Over 150 countries from six continents sent teams to compete

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:


Nearly a thousand high school kids from all over the world are in Washington, D.C., this week for what is being billed as the first-ever international robotics competition. And it's truly international. Some teams are coming from remote islands, others from areas without reliable Internet or places of conflict. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf went to check it out.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Eighteen-year-old Karston Shaerz is worried that his team's robot isn't working right.
KARSTON SHAERZ: So we just noticed that one of the arms has slide off handle.
LONSDORF: It's probably a casualty of two long plane rides across an ocean. His team is from the Caribbean island of Grenada, and they had to get a robot all the way here to D.C.
SHAERZ: So we wrapped it up in, like, foam, bubble wrap and duct taped it down and made sure that it was secure. It actually got lost.
LONSDORF: They eventually found it at a different airport gate. A lot of the teams here have similar stories - multiple plane rides, long layovers, complicated visas. An all-girls team from Afghanistan first had their visas denied, and then President Trump intervened to allow them into the country. That got a lot of media attention. But there are kids from all over the place.
MICHESE BALA: I'm Michese Bala (ph) from Runda.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #1: From the Philippines.
UNIDENTIFIED BOY #1: We're from Senegal.
UNIDENTIFIED BOY #2: From Team Australia.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #2: Team USA.
UNIDENTIFIED BOY #3: Team Bangladesh.
UNIDENTIFIED BOY #4: From Team Lebanon.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #3: I'm from Nepal.
UNIDENTIFIED BOY #5: Tokyo.
LONSDORF: A hundred and fifty-seven countries total. The organization running this is called FIRST Global, which was founded by Dean Kamen. He's the guy who invented the Segway. He says the point of this competition is to make robotics as cool as traditional sports.
DEAN KAMEN: Let's prove to kids that engineering, that inventing is every bit as fun, exciting and rewarding as bouncing a ball.
LONSDORF: His group has done these competitions in the U.S. But for this one he wanted to recruit teams who might not have ever even tried robotics before, so he got major tech companies to design and donate parts and put them in standard kits that could be shipped anywhere around the world. Kids don't need a sophisticated shop or tools to build anything.
KAMEN: It's sort of like plug-and-play in the world of robotics. They have motors and actuators and sensors and power supplies.
LONSDORF: And aluminum bars and gears and sprockets, screws, nuts, bolts.
KAMEN: And in a matter of a few weeks, most of these kids turned this big pile of stuff into working robots that can accomplish a task.
LONSDORF: That task in this case is sorting blue and orange balls. The teams are randomly paired against each other, and they earn points based on the number of balls they sort.
KAMEN: And we're going to see right now an unloading from Team Venezuela and one of the judges trying to funnel and help some of those balls in there. Hopefully they don't stall out. Those points should start registering up here. You see the score jump to 36. Goodness gracious, what a good jump for them..."

Read the full article at its source: http://www.npr.org/2017/07/17/537754562/students-compete-in-first-ever-international-high-school-robotics-competition

Afghan Robotics Team Update: Trump Heroically Saved Afghan Girls (Robotics Team)

From  https://wonkette.com/620252/kellyanne-conway-so-happy-trump-heroically-saved-afghan-girls-from-his-own-terrible-policies

"Kellyanne Conway So Happy Trump Heroically Saved Afghan Girls From His Own Terrible Policies

Nice time! Remember those Afghan girls who just wanted to come over here to compete in a robotics competition and were denied visas to do so? They arrived last night!
image: https://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Screen-Shot-2017-07-15-at-11.37.40-AM.png
Hooray! That is nice for them! Hope they win!
While they were not issued the business visas they needed, Donald Trump “intervened” and the Department of Homeland Security allowed the girls in on a system known as “parole” which would allow them to stay here for ten days without a visa.
image: https://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Screen-Shot-2017-07-15-at-11.40.43-AM.png
And for this, Kellyanne Conway is showering him with praise, about how others talk, and talk, and talk” and he ACTS.
image: https://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Screen-Shot-2017-07-15-at-11.40.43-AM.png

Yeah! Good for him! What a good boy! Way to DO things! You know, except for the fact that he caused the damn problem in the first place.
As ThinkProgress notes:

Left unmentioned by Conway is the fact the Trump administration is currently fighting in federal court to implement a travel ban that would bar nationals of six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. Afghanistan isn’t on the list, but Trump’s Islamophobia and visa crackdownare “emblematic of a broader effort to put a chill on Muslims entering the US,” as ABC News put it.

Donald Trump likes praise. He is surely enjoying all the praise he is getting for letting these particular girls into the country. It is a lovely PR moment for him. Except the problem is not simply that these particular girls were not allowed entry into the country for a robotics competition, but the fact that the policies he supports result in that happening in the first place. And that the Gambian robotics team were also initially denied visas.
image: https://img.wonkette.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Screen-Shot-2017-07-15-at-12.04.30-PM.png
If you unleash a truckload of angry bees on a group of people, and then hand one of them a Band-Aid, you are not a fabulous humanitarian. That’s not you doing the decent or right thing. You don’t get praise for that. You get praise when you take a moment and consider that perhaps — just perhaps — it was a poor idea to unleash that truckload of bees in the first place..."

Read more at https://wonkette.com/620252/kellyanne-conway-so-happy-trump-heroically-saved-afghan-girls-from-his-own-terrible-policies#whOPjmEQD994TmBg.99

FIRST Global: Robot challenge promotes STEM education around the world

"Robot challenge promotes STEM education around the world, even in least-developed countries

Don’t expect to see pole vaults, balance beams and diving boards when some of the world’s brightest young minds come together this month in Washington for what sponsors are calling the first international robot olympics.


With an impressive global turnout, and a little political controversy, the event will feature high school computer programmers, complex electronics and what organizers are calling “cooper-tition” — cooperation and competition — among participants.


Teams from nearly 160 countries and six continents are set to gather at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington starting Sunday to participate in three days of games designed to test their ingenuity and promote STEM education — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — as a field of work for everyone, including those in the world’s least-developed countries.

As a bonus, it will satisfy the passion young people have for building robots.
Scores will be based on how well the robots are able to pick up and deposit balls in specific places, as well as how they hang from a bar that lines the staging area. Manipulating the balls is meant to simulate solutions for separating contaminated particles from water and then delivering the water to a “reservoir” as quickly as possible — part of a larger engineering challenge of providing safe, drinkable water to countries around the world.


Like the official Olympic Games, the Washington gathering has not been free of political controversy, with both the Gambian team and an all-girl team from Afghanistan finding their original visa applications denied by the U.S. government. After a spate of publicity, the teenage members of the Gambian team were approved for visas, although Mucktarr Darboe, the team’s mentor and director of Gambia’s ministry of higher education, research, science and technology, will not be allowed to accompany them..."

Read the full article at its source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/9/first-global-robot-challenge-brings-stem-students-/

Student Robotics: Increasingly Important for Today's Students

From EdTech Focus on K-12... 

"Robots and Related Tech Play a Role in Advancing Curricula

Some experts look to AI and robotics as the teaching tools of the future.

Just as they have in manufacturing, defense, aerospace, transportation and dozens of other industries, robots and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing how humans teach and learn.


Manifestations of robotic and AI teaching technology can already be seen in the educational sphere. For example, L2TOR is a project funded by the European Union aimed at developing an AI robot capable of helping preschoolers develop basic language skills.


Futurist Brian David Johnson sees L2TOR as an early manifestation of a new wave of robotic tools that may become widespread in education. “These sentient tools will take over simple and social tasks that teachers and teaching aids provide today,” he says.


While robots are unlikely to replace human educators completely — students will still need social interaction with other humans — Johnson believes the technology will “push us to rethink, ­re-evaluate and reimagine what we think a teacher’s role is, who a teacher can be and how we value the work that the teacher is doing.”


Another example is Kaspar, a specially designed childlike robot being developed by British researchers to help autistic children learn to communicate with other people. Directed by a teacher or therapist via remote control, Kaspar uses games and songs to help children with their social skills.

Advancing Curricula to Match Tech

Not every classroom application of AI and robotics involves machines or programs acting as instructors. Some efforts aim to advance educational goals by allowing students to build or run their own robots. Robin Shoop, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Academy, advocates using robotics to advance computer science, science, technology, engineering and ­mathematics (CS-STEM) education.


“Students want to learn about things they find relevant,” Shoop says. “Robotic systems are everywhere, and that makes learning about them relevant.”


Shoop’s organization has found that, when used correctly, robots provide an excellent opportunity to advance math curricula. An outgrowth of this is Expedition Atlantis, a digital game distributed by the Robotics Academy in which players use the mathematical concept of proportional reasoning to pilot robotic vehicles in a quest to explore the undersea kingdom.

Early STEM Education

The educational impact of robotics extends beyond pure curricula. The nonprofit STEM engagement program For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) hosts robot-building teams and competitions across the U.S. Data show that participating students were two times as likely to pursue a STEM major in college.


“I am most proud of the alumni who have gone on to become engineers and technology teachers who are running FIRST teams of their own,” says Jason Rees, a team leader of the FIRST program at Churchville-Chili Central School District in western New York..."

Read the full article at its source: https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2017/06/robots-and-related-tech-play-role-advancing-curricula 

Pro Football Player Loses to Student Made Robot!

click on image above for video

"Seahawks Cornerback Richard Sherman Faces Off Against Compton Robotics Team

"You guys came and beat me at my own sport!" Sherman said. 

 

Seattle Seahawks All-Pro cornerback and Compton native Richard Sherman returned to the football field in Compton Tuesday to compete against one of the most accomplished teams to date in the Los Angeles area — the Compton High Robotics Club.

The Seahawks cornerback competed against a different type of quarterback than he's used to as part of Oberto Beef Jerky's "The Jerky Challenge." A football-throwing robot created by the robotics team attempted to throw footballs past Sherman and hit targets that hung from the goalposts.

"I love getting involved with initiatives that highlight positive programs in communities like my hometown of Compton, and I relish the opportunity to shut down this robot," Sherman said prior to the event.

While Sherman did catch a few balls, he didn't catch enough to win,

"I had a lot of days where I didn't know what I was going to do or where I was going to go, didn't know if I was good enough," said the NFL player. "A lot of self-doubt, a lot of people doubting me."

Angelica Hernandez, a student on the team, was impacted by Sherman's visit.

"It's inspiring to know that people like him know that there's more potential in us and more potential in Compton," she said. "Not just in sports but technology as well.

Despite being a new team with limited resources, the Compton High Robotics club continues to upstage other clubs in competitions across the state..."

Read the full article at its source: http://www.nbclosangeles.com/on-air/as-seen-on/Richard-Sherman-Takes-on-Compton-School_s-Robotics-Team_Los-Angeles-433963243.html

Gambian student robotics team finally granted U.S. visas after their two previous applications were denied.

From:  https://face2faceafrica.com/article/international-aerial-robotics-competition-gambia

Gambian Students Secure U.S. Visas To Attend Robotics Competition

For the competition, The Gambian team built a robot devised to clean contaminated rivers. Photo Credit: Al Jazeera

A team of Gambian student robotics enthusiasts have finally been granted U.S. visas after their two previous applications were denied.

While the initial rejections are unclear, the team will now travel to Washington, D.C., to participate in the FIRST Global Robotics competition that would see teams from about 164 countries, including about 40 from Africa, compete in a series of robotic games scheduled to be held between July 16th and July 18th, according to the BBC.


Team spokeswoman Fatoumata Ceesay, 17, says that her group’s participation in the event is a dream come true.

“We are excited and happy but also disheartened, because we are not going with our mentor because he is a government official,” Ceesay says.


Since U.S. authorities placed a ban on the granting of visas to Gambian government officials after a deportation row last year, Mucktarr Darboe, the team’s mentor and a director at the Gambian Ministry of Higher Education, wasn’t granted a visa.


The robotics competition is organized by FIRST Global, a non-profit organization which aims to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.


For the competition, the Gambian team built a robot that cleans contaminated rivers.
Ceesay says she hopes her team can achieve success on the international stage to highlight the Gambia’s potential to innovate and inspire her peers to pursue careers in STEM fields, such as engineering.
“I hope to come back with knowledge and inspiration to give young Gambians, especially the girls,” Ceesay says.

Last week, Face2Face Africa reported that the team — made up of five Gambian high school students aged 17 and 18 — were left disappointed after the U.S. consulate in Banjul repeatedly turned down their visa applications following an interview in April.


An all-girls team from Afghanistan was also denied U.S. entry visas to showcase their creation at the same competition.


U.S. President Donald Trump‘s controversial travel ban on residents, citizens, and refugees from six Muslim-majority countries went in to operation last week.
However, neither the Gambia nor Afghanistan are mentioned on the list.

Robots Play Important Role in 21st Century Curricula

Good piece from EdTech K-12...

"Robots and Related Tech Play a Role in Advancing Curricula

Some experts look to AI and robotics as the teaching tools of the future.

Just as they have in manufacturing, defense, aerospace, transportation and dozens of other industries, robots and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing how humans teach and learn.


Manifestations of robotic and AI teaching technology can already be seen in the educational sphere. For example, L2TOR is a project funded by the European Union aimed at developing an AI robot capable of helping preschoolers develop basic language skills.


Futurist Brian David Johnson sees L2TOR as an early manifestation of a new wave of robotic tools that may become widespread in education. “These sentient tools will take over simple and social tasks that teachers and teaching aids provide today,” he says.


While robots are unlikely to replace human educators completely — students will still need social interaction with other humans — Johnson believes the technology will “push us to rethink, ­re-evaluate and reimagine what we think a teacher’s role is, who a teacher can be and how we value the work that the teacher is doing.”


Another example is Kaspar, a specially designed childlike robot being developed by British researchers to help autistic children learn to communicate with other people. Directed by a teacher or therapist via remote control, Kaspar uses games and songs to help children with their social skills.

Advancing Curricula to Match Tech

Not every classroom application of AI and robotics involves machines or programs acting as instructors. Some efforts aim to advance educational goals by allowing students to build or run their own robots. Robin Shoop, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Academy, advocates using robotics to advance computer science, science, technology, engineering and ­mathematics (CS-STEM) education.


“Students want to learn about things they find relevant,” Shoop says. “Robotic systems are everywhere, and that makes learning about them relevant.”


Shoop’s organization has found that, when used correctly, robots provide an excellent opportunity to advance math curricula. An outgrowth of this is Expedition Atlantis, a digital game distributed by the Robotics Academy in which players use the mathematical concept of proportional reasoning to pilot robotic vehicles in a quest to explore the undersea kingdom.

Early STEM Education

The educational impact of robotics extends beyond pure curricula. The nonprofit STEM engagement program For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) hosts robot-building teams and competitions across the U.S. Data show that participating students were two times as likely to pursue a STEM major in college..."

Read the full piece at its source: https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2017/06/robots-and-related-tech-play-role-advancing-curricula

US denies visas to West African teen robotics team

Well, that's one way for the administration to guarantee that the US will rank high in STEM Education, deny entry to other kids who might deserve some acknowledgement and compete with our own... Has the administration even heard about global education and social learning? One of FIRST's precepts is "Coopertition": learning through cooperative competition. How are our kids going to learn to international standards if we won't let talented peers into the country to for them learn alongside? Duh!

"US denies visas to West African teen robotics team after families scraped together fees to apply

Five students from the West African country The Gambia will have to present their robot—which they built in shift ‘rigorous shifts’ throughout Ramadan—via Skype having received application denials from the U.S. embassy in Banjul.

“We were only told that we did not qualify, and that we could try again,’ director of The Gambia’s ministry of higher education, research, science and technology Moktar Darboe told Al Jazeera, adding the team was “very disappointed” by the decision.

“They put in so much effort into building this, and now, after all the sacrifice and energy they put in, they have been left disheartened,” Darboe said.

The students had to pay $170 for each visa application. Darboe told Al Jazeera the teens’ “parents had to sacrifice a lot to pay this fee.”

Read the full article at its source:  http://www.rawstory.com/2017/07/us-denies-visas-to-west-african-teen-robotics-team-after-families-scraped-together-fees-to-apply/

"U.S. denies visas for Afghanistan’s all-girl robotics team"

Disturbing piece from the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/02/afghanistans-all-girl-robotics-team-wont-be-allowed-to-come-the-u-s/?utm_term=.d4cae95810b3&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1

 

The Afghanistan FIRST Global team. (Courtesy of First Global)

"It's not easy to get robotics equipment through customs in Afghanistan, but that didn't deter this plucky bunch.

For months, a team of six teenage girls has been scrambling to build a ball-sorting robot that will compete in an international competition. Other teams received their raw materials in March. But the box sent from America had been held up for months amid concerns about terrorism. So the young engineers improvised, building motorized machines from household materials.

They didn't have time to waste if they were going to compete in the FIRST Global Challenge, an international robotics competition to be held in Washington, D.C., this month. Young teams from around the world face off against each other, in an effort to engage people in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

[Travel ban takes effect as State Department defines ‘close family’]

To participate, the girls from the city of Herat in western Afghanistan needed permission to travel to the United States. So, after they convinced their parents to let them go, they made the 500-mile journey to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul to apply for their visas. They did this twice, even though that location was targeted by a deadly truck bomb.


Things seemed to be lining up. But then the team got some bad news: Their visa applications had been denied. Roya Mahboob, who founded Citadel software company in Afghanistan and was the country's first female technology chief executive, is one of the team's sponsors. When the girls heard the news, she said, “they were crying all the day.”
“The first time [they were rejected] it was very difficult talking with the students,” Mahboob told Mashable. “They're young and they were very upset.”

Fourteen-year-old Fatemah told Forbes, “We want to show the world we can do it; we just need a chance.”

Today's WorldView

What's most important from where the world meets Washington

On their competition page, the girls wrote:

We want to make a difference, and most breakthroughs in science, technology, and other industries normally start with the dream of a child to do something great. We want to be that child and pursue our dreams to make a difference in peoples' lives.

The State Department does not comment on specific visa denials..."


Read the full article at its source:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/02/afghanistans-all-girl-robotics-team-wont-be-allowed-to-come-the-u-s/?utm_term=.d4cae95810b3&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1