Robot engineer Liam Peniston thinks his latest robot death machine might have military applications, but he’s a little glum about the prospect of getting paid for the plans.

That’s because Liam is a nine-year-old Saltus Grammar School student. He is one of a number of students who spend their Saturday mornings taking a two-hour robot workshop organised by computer science teacher Lamone Woods.

The Royal Gazette recently spoke with Mr. Woods and his students Liam and Shamar Morris, 10.

The boys’ faces lit up when they talked about what went wrong with their death machine that morning, which was too complicated for this reporter to understand even with a Masters degree.

Their enthusiasm was something that instructor Mr. Woods could well understand. When he was their age, his mother shipped him from activity to activity to no avail.

“My mother put me in sports, but it wasn’t me,” he said. “She put me in instruments, but that wasn’t me either. I really liked to build things and create things.”

Mr. Woods now has a Bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from Devry University and teaches at the Berkeley Institute.

A nine-year-old visionary with dreams of robotic grandeur can easily become a target on the playground, or at least attract strange looks. The robotics workshop is a bit like ‘Cheers’ for techie-kids, it’s a place where everyone knows your robot’s name.

“When these guys are here it is very comfortable for them,” said Mr. Woods. “No one looks at them like ‘what is he talking about’. Some of these kids may be future engineers or technicians. One of the kids in the group wants to be an astronaut and he is very, very serious about it.”

Mr. Woods aimed to expose kids with a technical bent to the technical fields at a younger age in a fun, interactive setting.

“Many of them think differently, or they see things differently. So when they come here everyone is on the same page. When they come here no one is shunned because they have a brilliant idea. That is the important thing.”

In all fairness though, many of the kids in the workshop also play sports and take music lessons. Shamar and Liam, for example, share a passion for music and both take classes with the Menuhin Foundation. Liam plays the cello and Shamar wants to either be a violin player or a lawyer when he grows up.

“Maybe I could just play the violin on the side,” he said thoughtfully.

The Saturday morning robotics workshop utilises various electronics and robotics kits, especially those offered through the Lego Mindstorm series.

“We don’t just do Lego,” said Mr. Woods. “Before we built other sorts of robots, but now we have the Lego Mindstorms as the base.”

Lego has merged with Pitsco education and Carnegie Mellon University to bring Lego to a new generation of youngsters. They are calling robotics ‘the fourth R next to reading, writing, and arithmetic’.

“It is a very robust programme,” said Mr. Woods. “It takes them from the beginning, right along through. We have computer software that they work with.”

At workstations, students go to a special website and listen to an online instructor who tells them about various real applications for robots, such as those used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). They are given the building blocks to put their robots together. Then they are asked to answer a series of questions about what they have done.

Mr. Woods said his workshop students are learning and skill-building without even noticing.

“They don’t even realise that they are learning how to problem solve,” he said. “Sometimes I find that the kids I teach don’t like to think. So much is given to kids today. Now they have so many things to fill their minds they don’t have to think of things to do. That is where I find a problem being caused.

“When they come here, they get to put their thinking into action. They have to look at the pieces and figure out how to make them work. Problem solving is one of the most valuable life skills. Every organisation wants problem-solving skills and life is about solving problems. If you can’t solve problems, you will always walk around very frustrated.”

For Liam and Shamar, the hardest part of the workshop was taking the robots apart at the end of the session.

“It’s painful,” said Shamar.

The budding robotics engineers have put together a number of different projects including robots that can sense black lines, a Titan tank robot, a cyber bug, and one robot that could manoeuvre through a maze.

“Me and Shamar are always team-mates and we made it through the maze first,” said Liam proudly. “We went down in history. It took us about an hour to get through the maze. Some of the other people didn’t make it.”

Mr. Woods originally intended the group to be for ages ten to 15, but soon found much younger kids desperate to get into the programme.

“We have some seven- or eight-year-olds who are just as enthusiastic as the older kids,” he said. “I am figuring that by the time they get to ten or 11 years old they will have even more knowledge. The whole idea is to get the basics in early, so that when they get to be 11 or 12, they will feel comfortable working with electronics.”

As a result of the wide age disparity, the workshop is split into different age groups that come at different times on a Saturday morning. The workshop is conducted at the Berkeley Institute, but is Mr. Woods’ own project. Students come from schools all over Bermuda.

“I do use this in my programming class at Berkeley, but it is not part of the main curriculum.”

In the United States there are several high profile robotics competitions held at the high school and college level. They are often attended by scouts from high-profile universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Carnegie Mellon University.

Unfortunately, Mr. Woods said Bermuda is a little bit behind on this score. However, his dream is to eventually get a group of kids ready to compete on a local and international level in robotics competitions.

He has been running the robotics workshop for several years, and interest in it is slowly gaining momentum. Last summer he conducted a two-week camp, this year it will be for the entire month of July.

He said leading the workshop is a way to keep up his own interest in electronics.

“When I came back, I wasn’t really working in electronics very much,” he said. “So this gives me an opportunity to do what I am interested in.”

On his desk, during the workshop was an electronic noise metre he created himself using pieces from one of the kits. It served to remind the students when their enthusiasm was getting out of hand.

“When I was young, I was always trying to create something new,” he said. “I like to be around the kids who are thinking like me. They remind me of myself. They get so enthusiastic about what they are doing.”

One of the participants in his earliest summer camp, Michael Sinclair, is now in the Belco Internship programme. He comes back during holidays to help with the younger kids.

“I am trying to make collaborations with government,” Mr. Woods said. “Workshop students will be taking part in this year’s Annual Exhibition at the Botanical Gardens. For example, we are doing a tech week camp in April.”

Mr. Woods currently runs the programme on his own, although he now has someone to help with the administrative aspects. Two Berkeley students also assist him.

He is now taking registration for the summer camp from July 2 to 22. For more information go to his website at www.robotworkshops.com. Also, see the Lego Mindstorms website at http://mindstorms.lego.com/.