Each year, the students in this class design and implement unique, individual robot designs that meet given design specifications.  This year's "crop" of budding Engineers are no exception. Jared Knee, for example, designed a computer-controlled, automated version of the children's game "Chutes And Ladders©."  It was fun to watch the computer "roll" dice and watch the players' pieces dance "magically" around the board.
    Craig Lezotte designed a computerized vending machine which allowed everything from initial selection to final candy delivery into a receptacle at the front of the mechanism.  Ron Vongskierttichachorn created a specialized plotter designed to engage the user in a challenging game of "Tic Tac Toe," while Steve Kinsel designed a mechanism that plots points on graph paper to draw any mathematical equation up to the third degree.
    Along the "more practical" lines, Drew Matyas built an automated label maker, Byron Darby envisioned a video tape rewinder, and Jeremy DeFalco constructed a mechanical telephone dialer.
    One of the most complicated designs to date was Steve Hazel's CD Jukebox  which incorporated an articulated arm mechanism to select and mount chosen CD's into an also computer-controlled CD Player.
    If you were to ask any of this elective class's participants, they'd very readily tell you how challenging the course is, but quickly add words like "fun" and "rewarding" to the description.
    You can help support this wonderful experience:  We're always looking for old, "dead" dot-matrix printers, discarded disk drives, CPU's and CamCorders-- they're a valuable source of motors, gears, belts, pulleys, tracks, etc.  If you have some old equipment that you don't need any more and would be interested in donating it for use in the course, kindly contact Jack Bozzuffi at 856-264-5644.