During a six-week Gizmo Garden held at Bowdoin College, Upward Bound students learned to assemble miniature robots that cumulated in a parade of miniature self-driving vehicles July 27.

Through the process, students assembled electronic sensors that allowed miniature robotic vehicles to detect and follow a road, becoming self-driving. They then added proximity sensors that could detect other vehicles, and wrote control code that would slow a vehicle’s speed if it got too close to the vehicle in front of it, thus avoiding collisions.

To customize their parade “floats”, students used an eight-by-eight array of lights that rode on top of each vehicle. Light shows were made by programming patterns, colors, and the timing of transitions. Programmable sounds completed their creations.

Lexie Moore’s gizmo parade float displayed a bird flying down and landing, changing colors as it flew.

“I didn’t have any prior robotics experience, so when I first joined, I was like okay, all of these people know all of these things, and I don’t,” the Phippsburg resident said. “But it was really easy to learn, and once I did, it was worth it.”

Bath’s Kaley West created a display of a whale complete with an animated water spout.

“I’d never done coding before, so I thought it would be something new to try,” she said. “It’s simpler and harder than I thought it would be at the same time — like if you forget one tiny punctuation mark it messes up the entire thing. But I wrote code to make my whale and to make music to go with it and it all works. It was just really fun.”

Tanager Karchenes of Bath built a gizmo representing the village “Nibelheim” from a video game. “I haven’t had experience with programming,” he said, “and I was glad to get that.”

Bowdoin Professor of Computer Science Eric Chown, who visited to see the gizmo parade, and said the program gets pre-college students “ interested in the concepts that show up in college level computer science.

“It gets them excited about science and robotics, and they’re solving the same kinds of problems we solve, just at an introductory scale,” Chown said. “So it’s really fun to watch that. I have two kids myself, and I’d really love for them to be involved in a program like this.”

Jamie McGhee, Assistant Professor of electrical engineering at Southern Maine Community College, led the program. He said the project allowed students to “try engineering in an environment that’s safe, fun, and expressive.”

Assisting McGhee in leading the program were electrical engineer Bill Silver and Bowdoin physics student Maya McCabe. The curriculum was created by Gizmo Garden LLC in Nobleboro and pioneered at Damariscotta’s Skidompha Library.

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