Most of Justin Lavner’s summer camps are designed to get kids up and out of the house, so it’s hard to see where his summer robotics and video game programming camps fit in.

But these camps help exercise that other part of children’s bodies that tend to be underused in the summer months — their brains.

After testing out the robotics camp idea last summer, Lavner has made the camp available at four locations in the Philadelphia area: the Cynwyd Club in Bala Cynwyd, the Barrack Academy in Bryn Mawr, Abington Friends School in Jenkintown and Valley Forge Educational Services in Malvern, PA.

“I wanted to create a camp where kids can shine, even if they do not always excel on the sports field. Robotics Camp is a place where this happens,” Lavner, the owner of Lavner Camps and Programs, said. “We received a lot of feedback from  parents who thanked us for running a great camp, and said their kids much preferred our Robotics camp over general day camp, where sports can be an emphasis.”

You can learn more about the camps here.

Last year, the robotics programming attracted approximately 200 campers to the one week camps that run throughout the summer.

The Robotics Camps aren’t simplistic either.

Campers work in groups of three or four to actually build small humanoid robots and, as they advance, can even create their own robot design. At the end of camp, campers of all levels and ages compete in what’s called ROBOWARS, which sounds futuristic and dystopian, but allows kids to show off their robots’ abilities.

In order to teach kids that range in age from six to 14 with little to no computer programming experience how to build small humanoid robots, Lavner says he actively seeks out highly experienced counselors and pays them well. Many of the counselors are student or graduates from top schools known for their engineering programs, including: Colgate, Columbia, Drexel, University of Pennsylvania Engineering and its school of arts and sciences and Temple.

“As a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, I have had a great network of highly intelligent and technical people to draw from both in and outside of the university,” Lavner said. “By investing financially in our excellent instructors, the overall quality of the camps reaches an extremely high level.”

Lavner, 30, who lives in Bala Cynwyd, was a tennis player at Penn, he says. Lavner Camps and Programs started out as the Lavner Tennis Academy for high level tennis training, a business that grew out of his tennis experience, he told Technically Philly.

But Lavner says his passion for helping kids learn and gain confidence himself motivated him to apply the lessons he’d learned running tennis camps to other types of programming.

“We have always understood how to help our students succeed, have fun and feel great about themselves,” Lavner said. “The model is growing to new areas, and we are reaching many new kids and families, which is a great success for us.”

This summer, the Video Game Programming and Design camp takes a much-reviled childhood activity and turns it into a learning opportunity.

“It offers great value in the sense that campers are being very proactive by creating their own video games, as supposed to playing videos games mindlessly on the couch for hours,” Lavner said. “There is nothing wrong with gaming in moderation, but this particular camp is all about creating, building, learning, and challenging themselves with games they make from scratch.”

Lavner’s camps run in one-week increments, but campers can participate for as many week as they want. During the school year, Lavner also offers after-school programming.

If you’ve got a child who might want to make a video game instead of just play it or build a robot instead of just watch one on TV, you can learn more about the camps here.

University of Pennsylvania-housed GRASP Laboratory may likely be the city’s only incubator that produces things that actually fly.

That’s because GRASP — which stands for General Robotics Automation, Sensing and Perception — incubates robotics startups inside Penn’s engineering complex near 33rd and Walnut in University City.

Inside the lab, which is also home to Penn’s robotics research, you’ll find soccer playing humanoids, flying drones, and all kinds of other robots, as FastCompany reported.

To find out more about the robotics research and startup incubation, watch the above video FastCompany posted about GRASP:

On Monday afternoon, more than 700 students and teachers attended Central High School’s Philly Robotics Expo at Drexel University’s College of Engineering hub, the Bossone Center.

At the event, focused on programming related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (known as STEM) and Philadelphia’s rich public education robotics community, students attended workshops across all skill levels, competed in mini-tournaments, and in general, had a chance to play with a variety of autonomous robots made by Philly teams.

The event was organized on conjunction with Philly Tech Week 2012 Presented by AT&T and the Philadelphia Science Festival.

WATCH VIDEO OF THE EVENT FROM NEWSWORKS

The event was keynoted by Penn Engineering professor Daniel Lee, who spoke about the history and future of robotics.

For more on local STEM education issues, see our ongoing coverage.

Roberto Clemente students planning their latest robot built in February. Photo by Matt Albasi.

Evelyn Cruz did not always want to be a robotics teacher or even dabble in technology. In fact, she started out as a bus attendant at Roberto Clemente Middle School in Hunting Park, making a meager salary.

Now, a technology teacher leader and robotics instructor at her old middle school alma mater, as Technically Philly first reported on in February, Cruz’s passion for teaching and giving back to her own community shows her dedication and promise to the neighborhood she grew up in.

“I’m a product of this school. I was one of them. I am a product of this neighborhood. I’m homegrown.” Cruz said.

Evelyn Cruz, who organizes the Roberto Clemente Middle School robotics program. Photo by Matt Albasi.

Cruz acknowledges the problems with advanced education in her community, noting that some kids do not have the resources or even knowledge to excel in an advanced field, such as engineering. Some of her students may not have basic tools at home, such as books or internet to even understand there are greater opportunities. Having grown up in a similar situation to many of her students, Cruz has a unique perspective.

“Some of my students tell me ‘Ms. Cruz, you don’t understand’. And I tell them, ‘I don’t understand? I don’t understand what it’s like to come home to no working heat or no food on the table?” Cruz said.

She considers herself a successful product of her neighborhood, attending Potter Thomas Elementary School, Roberto Clemente Middle School and Olney High School in North Philadelphia. Cruz obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education from Temple University in 1984.

Now, Cruz is a Technology Teacher Leader at Roberto Clemente, coaching other teachers in technology such as SMART boards and computer science. Her robotics classes range from 5th to 8th graders, where she teaches technology as a significant art. Cruz’s after-school robotics club also demonstrates her dedication to teaching, where she coaches students on how to build working robotics and to work in teams.

Her robotics team has participated in various competitions over the years, including the Boosting Engineering Science and Technology competition, First Lego League, and the Marine Advance Technology Education. Roberto Clemente has won awards in all three of these competitions.

“One of the main reason why I enjoy doing these competitions,” Cruz said, “is because it brings up real world situations where kids come in with some level of background knowledge, they apply it, then they use it.”

Watch a video report on the program.

The report was done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods program, the capstone class for the Temple’s Department of Journalism.

Two Roberto Clemente Students worked carefully on their Lego windmill. Photo by Erica DePascale.

At Roberto Clemente Middle School in Hunting Park, 4 p.m. may be after school, but for the student members of the robotics club, it is the beginning of learning new and exciting technology.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, 5th through 8th graders meet to discuss and create different robotics projects. The club, led by teacher Evelyn Cruz, allows students to play hands on with robotics kits and structures to produce everything from autonomous path-finding robots to remote controlled underwater explorers.

“It opens a lot of doors for them in terms of science and technology,” Cruz said. “It pushes them to be more open to doing the math and doing the science.”

Students first enjoy a snack time, where they can brainstorm in small groups about how to carry out their next project. Their latest project includes a windmill built from Legos programmed with a Mindstorm controller. Later, they assemble into teams where they use tools, such as internet and Lego guides, to build advanced robots.

Roberto Clemente Middle School robotics club also participates in competitive leagues. Every fall, the team competes in the Boosting Engineering Science and Technology, or BEST, competition. In the winter, the group participates in First Lego League competitions. This past January, they advanced to FLL Championships at the University of Pennsylvania, as Technically Philly reported.

In the spring, the club takes part in Marine Advanced Technology Education, or MATE contests. Roberto Clemente has won various awards in all three competitions.

“When the kids are competing, there is no booing. There’s patting on the back and supporting.” Cruz said.

The report is done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods program, the capstone class for the Temple’s Department of Journalism.

Maybe it will make me breakfast?

That was one young audience member’s reaction to seeing seven Hubo robots dance on stage at Drexel University on Monday. The presentation — put on by Drexel’s Department of Engineering in partnership with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Hubo Lab to kick of National Engineers Week — is not just a first for Philadephia, it’s the first time so many humanoid robots have taken the stage at once in the United States, say organizers.

The event was led by the celebrated Dr. Youngmoo Kim, associate professor and assistant dean of media technologies in the College of Engineering and director of the Music and Entertainment Technology  Lab.

While the “Hubo family,” as Kim called them during the exhibition, is not quite ready to make anyone breakfast, the Drexel graduate-level robotics engineers who work with the Korean technology demonstrated to a crowd of K-12 and Drexel students that the four foot, three inch (1.3 meter) tall robots could shake hands, withstand a shove from a four-year-old, perform tai chi and dance to a beat.

Aside from a few minor misses — like when Jaemi neglected to turn to shake hands with Dean of the College of Engineering Joseph Hughes — all seven Hubos performed surprisingly smoothly. Still, the engineers who work on them say that functions like balancing and walking are some of the most difficult to train the robots to do and Jaemi, in particular, has seen its share of disasters.

“If you look at Jaemi, you’ll see that her shell is cracked. She’s fallen off the stage before,” said Alex Alspach, a B.S./M.S. student who works with the robots. “As Dr. Kim was saying, we’ve learned how to even manufacture the pieces here… We fixed Hubo in 60 days after falling off the stage.”

“She lost her head before,” added Youngbum Jun, a Ph.D student at Drexel whose been working with the Hubo robots for three years.

The seven robots currently reside at Drexel thanks, in part, to two multi-million dollar grants from the National Science Foundation. The first, a five-year, $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) Program, brought the first robot, named Jaemi Hubo, to Drexel from Korea in 2009. Led by Dr. Paul Oh, the head of the Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics department, engineers in Drexel’s Autonomous Systems Lab became the only U.S. institution to have full-access to an adult-sized humanoid robot.

The second, awarded by the NSF in August 2010, is a $6 million Major Research Infrastructure (MRI) grant to build on Drexel’s initial research on Jaemi by funding a Drexel-led group of institutions to conduct further robotics research on six additional Hubos in the United States. Drexel is currently working on all seven robots, but this year MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Tech, the University of Southern California, Ohio State, Purdue and Penn will each receive a robot on which to do further humanoid robotics research.

Each individual Hubo robot has a minimum six-figure price tag attached to it. Dr. Kim said it was impossible to exactly quantify the cost of building a Hubo robots due to the countless hours of labor to build and maintain them, he estimated that the parts alone for each individual Hubo cost upwards of $300,000-$400,000.

“You can’t just go to Walmart and buy a robot,” Dr. Kim said. “This is really years in the making.”

The demonstration today was a milestone for Drexel’s robotics research on its own, but the goal is to develop Hubo to do far more than walk, shake hands, and dance. The goal is that the Hubo technology will be sensitive enough to make it a competent personal assistant. Maybe then that audience member will get the robot-made breakfast he was hoping for.

Photos by Matthew Albasi and Erica DePascale for Technically Philly.

Hotdog hats, bright white lab coats and Rosie the Riveter costumes set the atmosphere Saturday for the Penn First Lego League Championship Tournament, held in the Irvine auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania Saturday.

FLL, a robotics program designed for kids ages 9 to 14, aims to get young students excited and involved in science and technology. Fifty-two teams from across the tri-state area traveled to University City to participate in FLL’s annual championship tournament after advancing in regional qualifying rounds in December. Like elsewhere in the region, the City of Philadelphia’s School District is grappling with the need for strong STEM education.

This year’s theme was ‘Food Factor Challenge’, where judges evaluated elementary and middle-school teams on three events.

“It’s basically an exhibition of elementary and middle school students to show what they’ve learned in the area of robot design, core vales, project presentation and robot performance,” said Kendrick Davis, the head judge advisor.

Photos by Matthew Albasi and Erica DePascale for Technically Philly.

The Robot Game challenged teams to create a Lego-based autonomous robot that performs on a playing field in order to score points for their team. The project portion allowed teams to create a solution to a food-based problem they have identified, all while following FLL’s core values.

“It’s a little overwhemeling, we’ve never been in such a huge competition,” said Marlene Houlihan, the mentor for Beck Robotics Team from Beck Middle School in Cherry Hill, NJ. The competition provided pit areas for teams to practice with their robots and fix potential kinks in their designs before heading to the main stage competition. On stage, rounds of three teams cheered on their teammates while judges evaluated robotic performance. Separate judging allowed individual teams to present their Food Factor topic in conference rooms.

“They’re amazing, look around at all these kids. All they have is me. I don’t know much about this stuff, it’s all them,” Houlihan said.

After a day full of judging, teams finished out the day with a ceremony in the main hall. Awards went to teams with best performance, design, project, and core value.

“The most exciting part for me is when the kids feel like worked so hard and they don’t have everything together as much as they would like and they win an award and they’re like ‘Oh my god!’” Davis said.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

Without raising the alarm of an artificial intelligence-fueled planet takeover, robots are everywhere in Philadelphia.

The Transformers franchise, which has grossed over $1.5 billion to date, is set to release its third installment this summer.  YouTube is inundated with videos of robots doing everything from walking to playing the violin. Honda is set to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its humanoid robot Asimo this fall.

Philadelphia is quietly becoming a hub for the continually exploding robotics industry, especially in the robotics research and education fields.

“In the Philadelphia region we’ve seen so much interest and passion around robotics. There is so much cutting-edge robotics going on in Philadelphia and it is really starting to become a go-to place for robotics,” said Youngmoo Kim, an assistant dean of media technologies at Drexel University, which hosted the first ever Philadelphia Robotics Expo during Philly Tech Week this spring.

Drexel Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Youngmoo Kim worked with a graduate researcher to program one of their robots for a demonstration.

“Robotics is a tremendous motivator. Let’s face it—kids think robots are cool. I think robots are cool. Half the reason we do what we do is because it’s cool,” said Kim, who also heads the Music Entertainment Technology laboratory at Drexel, known as MET-Lab, which deals with how technology can be used for creative purposes.

The lab has developed a robot that can dance. But unlike other robots that dance in viral videos, this robot can recognize changes in a song and adjust accordingly.

“It’s a little bit different than other robots in that it is actually listening to the music. If you change the music, it will adapt to the different music. Most other robot videos you see are pre-synchronized so ours is an actively listening robot,” Kim said.

The lab also does work with HUBO, an advanced adult-sized humanoid robot through its partnership with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, as we’ve covered. Drexel is the only university in the United States to have a HUBO robot and the unique access it provides. Kim said that Drexel is looking to expand by adding more HUBO robots and partnering with other institutions for collaborative research efforts.

“We’re getting several more HUBOs in the future and basically sharing them to do joint research,” Kim said of a project that includes relationships with the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Virginia Polytechnic Institute among others.

One of the robots used at the Drexel MET-lab is a Robonova that has been programmed to dance and adapt to tempo when the song is changed.

Drexel is also partnering with public high schools right here in Philadelphia. Along with hosting the Robotics Expo this year, Drexel also sends several graduate students to work in classrooms around the district as part of its GK12 program.

The program has engineering graduate students work 10 hours a week with a teacher from the elementary to high school level. The goal of the program is to make the connection between what the kids are learning in the classroom and the exciting applications of that knowledge in engineering fields such as robotics.

“The students will say, ‘Wow, you work with robotics—that’s so cool,’ and we try to show how that involves physics and math to try to get high school students more interested and motivated to study science,” Kim said.

The School District of Philadelphia is not receiving this aid in robotics and other science, technology, engineering and mathematics initiatives externally without making the program a priority internally. The district puts on three different high school robotics competitions each year including the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology competition, Boosting Engineering Science and Technology competition and Marine Advanced Technology Education competition, which District Robotics Coordinator Kendrick Davis said is the only underwater robotics competition in the state.

“Robotics is definitely growing a lot within the district. For instance, the BEST competition at one point had only four schools participating in it, but now it has grown to over 30 schools,” Davis said.

The district is currently putting more resources into initiatives like robotics thanks to the GEAR UP grant, which was awarded to the district last fall and runs for six years. The GEAR UP program seeks to increase college readiness in public school students from early on in their education.

Although the GEAR UP grant has helped the district in its efforts to increase science and technology resources, there are still gaps in the capabilities among schools, especially in activities as expensive as robotics.

Kendrick Davis, the robotics coordinator for the School District of Philadelphia discussed the growth and future plans of robotics in Philadelphia schools.

“Part of the reason is that people aren’t educated in the importance of STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] so they don’t see the need to invest as is necessary to run a sustainable program. Some schools are few and far between and others have an overabundance. So a lot of it is showing why it is important and the impact it has on our student’s academic experience,” Davis said, who also noted that thus far budget cuts have not seriously affected the districts STEM efforts.

“We’re always looking for support. All the teams need financial support and engineers to get involved with their teams,” said Dan Ueda, who leads the Central High School robotics team.

With scarce resources at some schools the district and individual schools have reached out to business to help support STEM initiatives including robotics programs.  The main goal is always to continue the expansion of STEM education and enhancement of student education.

“It’s a double play of what the district is doing and what individual schools are doing to get support,” Davis said, “Our major goal is to keep things running. STEM is definitely a part of the districts action plan. We want to make sure we keep having STEM initiatives and make sure our students are continually exposed to things that are outside of the curriculum, things that will bring it alive.”

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

The Central High School Robolancers in Olney should be designing a robot for a different task than usual: one that gives out a good pat on the back. The team of robot-building students placed in the quarterfinals of the local-regional For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology robotics competition in Philadelphia, and took first-place overall in the local-regional Boosting Engineering Science and Technology competition.

The Robolancers competed in grueling competitions which required them to put in long hours designing, building and programing their robots. (Photo courtesy of Central High Robolancers)

After winning the BEST regional, the team traveled south to Alabama for the BEST south-regional competition, where they took sixth-place overall. The top eight teams competed in the national BEST competition in Florida, and the Robolancers placed second in video presentation and third in engineering notebook.

The team also competed in the local underwater Marine Advanced Technology Education competition for the first time this year, placing first in presentation but taking second in the overall competition after a blown fuse disabled their robot. They then went on to Texas for the international MATE competition in Houston earlier this month.

Daniel Ueda, a former mechanical engineer, is director of the Robolancers. He serves as a teacher and guide to the students, with help from a few parents and mentors from local companies like Boeing.

“We need more adults who understand engineering to be involved in the mechanical design process,” Ueda said in an interview with Technically Philly at his lab in Central High.

“There are so many components to a robot, and so many different people working on it, that we need more people who know what they are doing,” Ueda continued, gesturing to the various electrical and mechanical components that cluttered the sparse furniture of the room.

“The designs are completely done and built by the students,” Ueda said. “I’m just here to guide them along the way.”

The competitions require teams to put together a full engineering document, complete with computer-assisted-design drawings, electrical schematics and programming, as well as an explanation of the process and how it works. In addition to the lengthy paperwork, students must also give an oral presentation in front of engineers and also maintain a vendor table where they must pitch their ideas and demonstrate their knowledge.

“Competitions vary year to year, but the parameters are basically the same,” Ueda said. “The whole gamut of engineering is included in these competitions. It goes beyond just building a robot.”

STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] programs like the FIRST, BEST and MATE competitions are working at schools like Central High to engage and interest students in engineering.

“This year we graduated six students, and of those six, four are going into mechanical engineering,” Ueda said. “It is amazing that some of the kids come in here knowing nothing about engineering, and then graduate and enter into the professional field and do wonderful things.

“The things they are doing now in high school compares to things I did in my senior year of college,” Ueda added.

Being a part of the Robolancers not only challenges students academically, but also socially.

“You have kids start freshman year who don’t really fit in sometimes,” Ueda lamented. “But throughout the four years in the robotics program, they learn how to be socially comfortable with themselves.

Daniel Ueda, director of the Central High Robolancers, demonstrated how a robot works at the team's Central High lab.

“They develop so many useful skills that they can use in life—reading, writing, teamwork—that don’t come as easily to some of the students as others,” Ueda said.

Kevin Mai, head programmer of the Robolancers and a recent graduate of Central, agreed that STEM programs such as the FIRST, BEST and MATE competitions were invaluable learning tools for him and his peers.

“Winning regionals and making it to nationals meant a lot to us as a team,” Mai said. “We really bonded together as a family.

“These programs really teach us to think outside of the box in ways that normal classes do not do,” Mai said. “Math and English classes just teach us to memorize stuff, but with robotics we get to see our skills actually applied in real-life.”

Mai and his peers often volunteered long hours after school to work on their robots, sometimes staying until the building closed down at 11 p.m. “That is what is fun about robotics though—the challenge,” Mai said.

Most kids, not to mention adults, think robots are cool, so getting them interested is a job that really does itself. Events like the Robotic Expo during Philly Tech Week and the School District of Philadelphia’s Summer Bridge program allow students to test robots and experience how they work. The biggest problem he faced engaging students, Ueda said, was getting girls involved in the mechanical aspects.

“The girls are always very involved in the writing process and presentations,” Ueda said, “but they generally aren’t as interested in using tools as the boys.”

Robotics programs are becoming more popular each year, Ueda said, but communication between schools needs to improve.

“Some schools have more resources than others,” Ueda said. “We have decent financial support from the district as well as from generous alumni.”

Ueda has been reaching out to other schools in Philadelphia to interest pupils across the county in robotics and engineering.

“We’ve been working with the Philadelphia Girls School to start a BEST team there next year,” Ueda said.

The Robolancer's robots were designed, built and programmed entirely by the students.

Ueda and his students will visit the neighboring school twice a week to train the students and assist them in building a robot.

“We are trying to work more this year on getting other kids in the city and other teams involved,” Ueda said.

STEM programs are something teachers like Ueda and students like Mai said they want to see available for every interested student.

“These programs should be available for younger students, too,” Mai said.

“My younger brother is interested in learning software development, but his middle school doesn’t have any STEM programs,” he continued. “This is something that every school district in Philadelphia should have, not just three or four.”

Those clever programmers at the GRASP (General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception) Lab at the University of Pennsylvania have made these quadrotor helicopters autonomous, teaching them how to work together while building things.

Read MORE or watch the video below.