February 12, 2007 – The last six weeks have been a crash course in high-tech product development for students at Niwot, Silver Creek and Monarch High Schools. For these teams of aspiring engineers, the product is a life-sized robot that – if all goes well – will perform a series of mechanical tasks in front of hundreds of tech-savvy spectators and a few eagle-eyed judges next month at the FIRST Robotics Colorado Regional Competition in Denver.

Working alongside these students for the past six weeks are engineers from Seagate Technology, Ball Aerospace, Lockheed-Martin and IBM. These engineers, who serve as mentors for the teams, bring with them a wealth of expertise in mechanical, electrical and software engineering – all essential disciplines in designing these complex computer-programmed machines. The mentors also bring a level of enthusiasm to the process that makes it hard to distinguish between the kids on the teams and the adults.

Read complete article here: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=null&vgnextoid=92c3becdbe0e0110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD