Building motorized robots and making them sumo wrestle is more than just fun – it’s also a way for high school and college students to get interested in engineering, and David Martinez, engineering department chair at College of the Canyons in Valencia, is dedicated to doing just that.
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And it has been exciting for many of the students who took Martinez’s class over the summer – a class that was designed to give students an introduction to robotics and engineering.

These students spent a majority of their 9-week class building a “Boe-bot” – a small “brain with wheels,” which the students modified – putting light sensors on them to detect shadows and “whiskers” to detect hard objects – so they could perform tasks, most of which were pretty complex.

One group of students filed down part of the aluminum legs and made the Boe-bot creep around like a spider. It was able to climb the steep dirt embankment outside the class.
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And while the students were having fun, they were actually learning high-end scientific and mathematical concepts.