Our current outreach activity is part of the Saturday Science program, which is designed to introduce junior high students to career opportunities in math and science. On three Saturday mornings, we invite 30-35 8^th and 9^th grade students into our lab and teach them how to program robots. The students are grouped into teams, given a handout, and of course some verbal instructions. See also a short paper which will be presented at the AAAI 2001 Spring Symposium: Robotics and Education.

We have two simple mobile robots which we have designed and built from legos. "Freddy" is built with treads. "Willie" has two active wheels and one passive wheel. The "brains" of each robot is a Tiny Tiger micro-controller.

This program is run by Prof. Marjorie Skubic in the Computer Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

Saturday Science is sponsored by the NSF as part of a broader program, Promoting Young Women in the Physical Sciences, which is directed by Prof. Meera Chandrasekhar, physics professor at MU and Dr. Becky Litherland, science coordinator for the Columbia Public Schools.

The PC board shown in the pictures was designed by Matt Aubuchon, who also did most of the low level programming. The PC boards were built by the MU Engineering Electronic Shop. The robots were designed and built by Byron Dill, George Chronis, Kristi Hummel, Donna Haun, and students from Prof. Skubic’s CECS 373 class: Jennifer Bailey, Jared Coberly, Kevin Dodds, Jeanine Johnson, Seth Klein, Spyridon Revithis, and Hyo-Jin Suh.