Today was an exciting day for a group of very young students here in Chico. A few AIME officers took a trip to visit Chico Nursery School, a preschool in central Chico. The kids had been studying space and technology during the month, which made an excellent opportunity for us to show them a few robots and explain their functions.

To start, after introductions we brought in a well-known robot that the kids would recognize: Wall-E! We also introduced our mascot robot, AIMEE. After explaining other basic parts of robots to the kids, such as motors and wheels, we did an activity with the students so they could experience “programming” a robot to follow instructions. In this case, the robot was Miss Jessie!

Each student had an opportunity to hold the “controller” and give Miss Jessie instructions for how to move through an obstacle course laid out on the floor based on a set of options on a board: walk, over, right, and left.

After the exercise, the kids were given a few examples of how a real robot navigates if it is autonomous by using various types of sensors, such as push-button, sound, light, and ultrasonic sensors to establish obstacles within its local environment. A demonstration of ultrasonic navigation was done by James and Kate to the delight of the kids.

Next, students were shown pictures of the different kinds of robots that exist today, including robotic manufacturing equipment in the auto industry, the newly-launched rover, Curiosity, as well as the Google Car (an autonomous vehicle), and several others.

We wrapped up the visit by showing the kids our machine known as an EggBot, which is a robotic apparatus that can be used to draw on egg-shaped or spherical objects with a Sharpie or other fine-tipped pen. We had customized a small collection of ping-pong balls with each student’s name ahead of time, and handed each child their corresponding ball.

At the end of the visit, a few of the kids who stayed behind for a little while played with our Hexbug assortment that we had walking around on a table top – these toys, which can be found at many stores, were perfect for the kids to see sensors in action.

We would like to thank Irene and Jessie for having us visit the preschool, and we were glad to be able to hopefully inspire a few future engineers.

Additional photos can be seen in our gallery over on our Facebook page.