High schoolers w/in 5 hrs of Cambridge, MA interested in robot arms that draw?

[EricVanWyk]

I'm back in Boston being a professor again. One of my friends/colleagues is looking for some test pilots for an interesting program they are starting. Any FRC folks interested in playing with robot arms that draw?

Do you all know any high schoolers nearby (or if there's more than a dozen of them, within 5 hours driving distance of Cambridge, MA) who would be enthusiastic about things like an introductory engineering course involving robot arms?

We would like to talk to them for 10-15 minutes on the phone about engineering education sometime in the next week or two, and understand if they have any interest in a combined online course+kit that involves robot arms that draw. If they are interested we could eventually progress to a 5 hour workshop which covers a significant subset of https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...PPWOIb8P8/edit sometime within the next three weeks for a max of 10 people at once.

Thanks!
--Nancy, team 1261 PRHS robolions in Duluth, GA back in the day, MIT MechE '13
narwhaledu.com

technical details:
edX platform-based course, 6 weeks, ~20 hours
only need a screwdriver and laptop, everything else provided
reusable components after building kit: wall 7.5v power supply, arduino nano, servo breakout board, 3 hobby servos

[Pault]

Just sent out an email about this to my team. Hopefully I can round up a crew to do this.

[Nancy O.]

Hello from Nancy here!
Happy to answer any questions and chat on the phone if anyone would like to.

In addition to the 2 hour workshop (intro to arduino, robot arms kinematics)

Also, we're possibly piloting a 7 hour long program at both Martha Vineyard High School and Abby Kelley, and are looking to pilot at 1 or 2 more schools, so if you know a school or teacher that'd be interested, please do let us know.
Thanks all!

[|DELTA|]

Wow! sounds like an awesome opportunity! I wish I was within 5 hours of Cambridge!

[Nancy O.]

Eck, I can't edit my post anymore, but here is a video of it drawing a narwhal: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v2RA_bAGDU

There have to be more high schoolers who like robot arms in the northeastern US area! Haha.

Also, no worries, our goal is to validate this in real life and then offer the course online in the next few months or so. Also if you are like me and want to make dancing hexapods right NOW here is some useful info about inverse kinematics here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Arti...ainting-robot/
http://www.instructables.com/id/Robo...-Servo-Motors/
http://www.eng.utah.edu/~cs5310/chapters.html
and http://groups.csail.mit.edu/drl/wiki...ing_Curriculum

Warning: trigonometry involved.