Twenty-seven Delaware Valley high school students got hands-on experience in basic concepts of electrical engineering at Temple this summer in a five-week introductory electrical engineering course taught by electrical and computer engineering Associate Professor John Helferty.

As part of the course, the students tested their skills and creativity by designing and building small battery-powered, microprocessor-controlled autonomous robots, which featured infra-red detectors and transmitters, motor controllers, a wireless camera and Bluetooth.

The course culminated with a “robot laser tag” competition in which the students, working from a desktop computer, remotely guided their robot through a 10’ x 12’ maze on a “seek-and-destroy mission” to kill the other robots while navigating toward the maze’s center.

Participating students earned two college credits for the course, which was funded by the NASA/Pennsylvania Space Grant Consortium.