Six other teachers as well as engineers from the community help students build a robot each spring, which they enter in competitions with other schools.
To speed rescue efforts, engineers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a robot that would eliminate some of the unknowns of mine rescue operations and arm first responders with the most valuable tool: information.
Engineers can calculate the most efficient route for a spray-painting robot to take around a car body, work out how quickly parts must be supplied, look for bottlenecks or even tell if a human worker's task is likely to give him backache.