“Kids these days.” Usually, the comment is an expression of disdain, alluding to a video game culture, high fructose diet and general apathy.

     Yet one look into room 209 at Smith Hall at Copiah-Lincoln Community College this week might suggest another viewpoint altogether.

     For the fifth year in a row, 20 fifth through seventh grade students from the area can be found at the college’s summer Robotics Camp. Within the confines of Smith Hall, future engineers, computer programmers and scientists can be seen scrambling throughout the room, attempting to calibrate and program their own robots with impressive skill and technique.

     The camp, which presents the kids involved with a series of challenges, complete with individual and team awards, is the brainchild of Professor Kevin McKone. McKone, who teaches physics and engineering at the college, provides instruction along with assistance to the students at the camp.

      According to McKone though, his role at camp is minimal. The professor suggests: “We are fortunate to have equipment that is very user-friendly. And the kids tend to pick up the basics of robotics very quickly. I serve more as a guide than anything else.”

     Guide or not, the professor’s voice is at once raspy and determined, certainly the result of speaking over the exuberant kids, whose enthusiasm is currently piqued by a maze race challenge, which pits teams of two against each other.

     Each team is tasked with programming their robots to perform “rotations,” which will eventually allow the robot to perform figure eights, and in turn, compete in an upcoming race challenge.

     Before it’s all over, the kids will program, re-program and design their robots to carry as much weight as possible up an incline, perform robotic functions underwater, and ultimately complete in a “sumo wrestling” challenge. Robotic sumo-wrestling requires the programmer to equip the robot with information necessary to find another robot, and knock it out of a specified area.

     The kids do all the technical work, including extensive hands-on design of Lego’s Mindstorms toys, which incorporate a NXT-G programming language that was developed at MIT and Carnegie Mellon Universities. The kids learn how to use the program, which can handle a multitude of basic robotic tasks during the four-day camp.

     After all, as 11-year-old Hayden Lambert quips, “Robots are stupid. Every move they make needs to be decided for them.” Lambert’s teammate in the current competition is 10-year-old Jeremiah Washington.

     Washington elaborates on the technique for getting robots to do what you want. “First, we have to tell the robot to go straight. Then we can tell it move in different directions.”

      Electronics instructor at the college, Carey Williamson also helps assist kids at the camp. Notably, Williamson and a number of his college level students received sixth place in an international competition that judges underwater robotic design.

     The prestige of the high placing at the event, coupled with the enthusiasm of Dr McKone and his assistants, has encouraged many of the students to come back to the camp year after year.

     Twelve-year-old Drew Hulon, for example, has been to the camp four years in a row. “It’s just really fun, he says. “I have always been the tinkerer in the family.”

     What the kids get out of the camp ultimately cannot be measured in dollars, according to Becki Wright, a teacher at Enterprise Attendant Center and Robot Camp helper. “This experience really helps open up your own eyes – especially as a teacher – to see kids so eagerly involved with something that seems so complicated.

     “If the kids can pick up these skills this quickly,” she continued, “I can only imagine what I might get them to do in my classroom.”

     As McKone suggests, “Not everyone can or wants to be involved in baseball camp or basketball camp. For every kid that goes to football camp, only a small percentage will ever make a living at it … if then. Robot camp is an attempt to get kids interested in technical career fields that can be found in the area.”

     The last day of the four-day camp is Friday, June 19.