The STEM Robotics program is an after school program designed for 5th and 6th graders. In 10 sessions for one hour a week students will build a home-made robot.
This program is more about building a home made robot step by step and not from a kit. We ‘will’ use duct tape and bailing wire techniques and will ‘learn by doing’.
We will learn about and use tools from multiple areas such as Computer Aided Drafting (CAD), cloud based development (Google Apps), 3D printing, Servo motors, Wiring and Soldering, and basic programming fundamentals.
Mr. Harvey has over 20 years of experience in the fields of Computer Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Computer Science and pure hackery. He obtained his bachelors degree in Electronic Engineering from Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, a school known for its ‘learn by doing’ instructional model.
I’ve been interested in Robotics since I was in grade school. I had a toy called a ‘Big Trac’ when I was young that allowed me to program a small treaded vehicle with a keypad. It had something like 32 commands that it could store and I had hours of fun with it before I tore it apart and started trying to modify it. While at Cal Poly my senior project was a group-based project aimed to design, build, and program a robot that followed a maze and competed against other robots. At one point in my career I worked for a few years for iRobot corporation on a D.A.R.P.A funded program aimed at creating small pocket-sized robotos with 360degree field of view that could be thrown and would create a self-healing self-created mesh communications newtork for situational awareness. This project later became a successful iRobot product called FirstLook. Currently I work for San Luis Obispo based Gateworks Corporation designing and writing software for embedded computers.