NEXUS

Many people agree that UTEP is best known for their great engineering department and their innovative research. One thing people may not be aware of is that these research laboratories not only offer opportunities for UTEP students to gain technical experience, but also gives the unique opportunity to high school students interested in the engineering field to do a semester long internship. This program, NEXUS allows high school students gain a more technical knowledge in the engineering field. This fall 2008 seven of Bel Air high school students were chosen for this opportunity. We - Jessica, Marcos, and Anthony, were assigned to the LIMA lab, where we learn basics on mechanical, electric, and computer engineering. We had the opportunity to work with several different projects from which we chose one. We worked with Trilobots, robots that had previously been used by a mining company in New Mexico for exploring mines and caves and were discharged due to water damage and other hardware problems. The sole purpose of our assignment was to repair the robots and maximize their performance. The First step of our project was to present a proposal stating our goals, methods to accomplish these goals, budget and the overall initial conditions of the robot. We initially started our project by troubleshooting the robot in order to identify the malfunctions. Figuring out the problems was frustrating at first, taking into consideration our limited background on the subject. In the end we realized we were focusing too much on the big components of the robot instead of focusing on the smaller components. It turned out, that all of the problems involved simple things such as cables not being connected correctly or sensors not being calibrated. With a small budget of $21.00 USD and the help Dr. T. Sarkodie-Gyan, and Gilbert Contreras we managed to repair and stabilize a total of 4 robots.