Libby students experience robotics

Professor Hunter Lloyd demonstrated his robots to the Libby High School Thursday.

Lloyd is a graduate of Montana State University and a professor in the university’s computer science department, specializing in robotics. He visited Libby High School to show the students the kinds of technology with which he works.

During his presentation, Lloyd showed the students and staff how he and his students make their robots move, see and even talk.

Lloyd showed the school a teddy bear that he had designed with an alarm clock in it, which could be silenced in the most violent ways possible without worrying about damaging the clock. Lloyd demonstrated this while reminiscing about his college years, saying that throwing an alarm clock across a room is more therapeutic than simply smashing the snooze button. With this in mind, he designed a way to achieve that catharsis without damaging the clock.

The first robot Lloyd demonstrated was a rover that was programmed to follow a specified path. The rover would start at point A, following a line almost perfectly, to point B. The rover would then turn around and go right back to point A.

Lloyd also demonstrated a small robot dog that could respond to touch and light. The dog was capable of walking on its own, avoiding obstacles and moving its paw to wave and goad students.

In addition to his robots, Lloyd brought a couple of systems to demonstrate. The first was an eye system designed for use on a Mars rover. The eye would observe the area within sight, and map the area using landmarks. The eye would then take note of the object’s appearance and remember its location in relation to other objects in order to keep the rover equipped with it safe from accidents.

The second system was a 3D model builder. The system maintains alignment on an axis and observes the surrounding environment to build a 3D model of said environment. Lloyd used this system to create interactive video games using the environment as the setting.

“One day, I was in Ace Hardware and the kids had come in with me,” said Lloyd. “By the time I was leaving the store, they had disappeared. I finally found them in the back of the store, playing with the system, shooting at stick figures who were chasing after them.”

The coup-de-grace of Lloyd’s presentation was his robot friend, Looney, a bipedal robot capable of introducing itself, walking, telling jokes, dancing and even playing soccer. 

With his robot friends, Lloyd hoped to show students what is possible when they choose to enter careers that involve science, technology, engineering and math.