TANKBOT: Marvin Hall puts the finishing parts on a robotic tank, made using various pieces from a Lego component kit. (Photos: Michael Gordon)

Say the word 'robot' and most people visualise a machine with limbs and a head like humans, quite resembling the machine men of Star Wars and Robocop fame. But a robot, as the Oxford English Mini dictionary puts it, can be any "machine programmed to move and perform certain tasks."

We see them every day, without noticing - traffic lights, photocopiers, ATM machines, your microwave or VCR, an electronic gate and scanners are all robots.

Marvin Hall, CER (Chief Educational Revolutionary) of Halls of Learning (HOL) says a robot has three defining features: a physical body; a programme that controls it and a specific behaviour or action.

How do humans compare with robots? According to
Hall, a part-time UWI lecturer in Educational Technology and a Mathematics teacher at Campion College there are four basic similarities:

1) Humans have a brain to process information and make decisions, robots also have a brain - a computer brain made up of electrical circuits;

2) Humans have muscles and tendons to help them move, some robots have motors that make them move;

3) Humans have joints, bones and cartilage that help them make complicated movements, while robots are made up of mechanical parts like gears, pulleys and other mechanisms;

4) Humans eat food to gain energy and the human system sends signals back and forth to our senses, robots have a power source and send electricity back and forth to its inputs and outputs.

Teenagers over age 14 will have the opportunity of making their own robots through a series of intensive one week courses throughout the summer. There are two separate programmes from which to choose: Lego Yuh Mind and Build Yuh Riddim. The former, will be tutored by Hall and will let participants design robots using basic components and control them with instructions from the computer. In the latter, tutor Wayne Marshall, a Harvard scholar and independent music producer, will show participants how to use digital samples and computer software to create their own musical beats and rhythms. Highlights of this course will be visits to a local recording studio and production facilities that will allow participants to learn about the industry and meet some of Jamaica's top producers and engineers.

The curriculum being used in the Lego Yuh Mind course was developed by the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy in Pittsburgh, USA.

"It's very easy," Hall says. "A builder with any imagination and a Lego kit, which comes with over 800 pieces, including a RCX (brain), sensors and motors, can produce his own masterpiece."

Participants who do well in the robotics course will also have the option of becoming part of a local team which will compete in the Unites States' National Robotics Competition next year.

Registration has already begun for the HOL courses, each costing $7,000. The final registration date is June 27, 2004. Contact 847-9375 or 342-6986 for further details.

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