Building robots? They have an App for that

Students in Lynbrook High School’s game programming class have been combining their science, technology, engineering and math skills to delve into the world of mechatronics.

Mechatronics is a field of study that integrates mechanical engineering, control theory, computer science and electronics to manage complexity, uncertainty and communication in engineered systems. Using principles of mechatronics, students have been busy creating game applications for Smartphones, as well as building and programming their own robots.

They began the course by creating a series of game apps for the iPhone and Android smartphones using Adobe Flash with Action Script 3. Drawing on this experience, they were assigned the task of programming and engineering their own robots. During the first phase of the project, students used Robot C, a programming language developed at Carnegie Mellon University, to program their robots to draw a series of dotted lines in a specific pattern on a whiteboard, simulating a situation in which a larger real-world robot might be used to paint lines on roadways. In the second phase of the project, students engineered the actual robots using Lego Mindstorms hardware. As often happens in a real-world engineering lab, students had to go through several rounds of testing and modification before their robots could perform the task to their satisfaction.

“It was fascinating for me to watch as each team developed their own unique solution to each problem using the same basic tools,” said technology teacher Jeffrey Bernhardt.

Bernhardt was one of only ten teachers from around the tri-state area chosen to participate in the SMART program this summer at Polytechnic Institute of NYU. Through this program, he will receive intensive training in mechatronics, doing more advanced versions of some of the projects he teaches in his game programming class. With this enhanced training, he hopes to integrate more robotics into future instruction.