Linkmeister

A robot named Stinky

The other day I was in a doctor's office; there was a copy of Wired magazine on the table. I picked it up out of boredom (sometimes I think patients should be allowed to bill doctors for their time, just as doctors do for theirs) and read a wonderful and heartbreaking story. A bunch of undocumented Mexican immigrant kids from Carl Hayden Community High School in Phoenix entered a contest put on by the Marine Advanced Technology Education Center called the Remotely Operated Vehicle Competition. Who was the competition? Oh, MIT, Cape Fear Community College, Monterey Peninsula College, Long Beach City College; all places with a lot more access to resources than a public high school in West Phoenix.

The robot competition (sponsored in part by the Office of Naval Research and NASA) required students to build a bot that could survey a sunken mock-up of a submarine - not easy stuff. The teachers had entered the club in the expert-level Explorer class instead of the beginner Ranger class. They figured their students would lose anyway, and there was more honor in losing to the college kids in the Explorer division than to the high schoolers in Ranger. Their real goal was to show the students that there were opportunities outside West Phoenix. The teachers wanted to give their kids hope.

Just getting them to the Santa Barbara contest in June with a robot would be an accomplishment, Cameron thought. He and Ledge had to gather a group of students who, in four months, could raise money, build a robot, and learn how to pilot it.

[snip]

While other teams machined and welded metal frames, the guys broke out the rubber glue and began assembling the PVC pipe. They did the whole thing in one night, got high on the pungent fumes, and dubbed their new creation Stinky. Lorenzo painted it garish shades of blue, red, and yellow to designate the functionality of specific pipes. Every inch of PVC had a clear purpose. It was the type of machine only an engineer would describe as beautiful.

The rest of the story is here, complete with photos. There are more photos here. Suffice to say, these kids won; it's how they won that's such a great story.

After reading that, if you're interested, here's a link to La Vida Robot Scholarship Fund to benefit Cristian Arcega, Lorenzo Santillan, Luis Aranda, and Oscar Vazquez. They're all stuck in immigration no-man's land, and they are just the sort of kids this country needs to nurture.

Posted by Linkmeister at August 11, 2005 09:57 PM | TrackBack