UNL Engineering StudentsCelebrate Robotics Week

By: Bill Steckis Email

Updated: Fri 10:53 PM, Apr 13, 2012

Robotics Week. It's a festival for those who are enamored by gears, gadgets and goals.

One student shows off her field goal kicking robot. "We have an existing kicker and it can kick 60 yards."

It's the 99th annual UNL engineering school open house. It's an opportunity to showcase it's nationally recognized Engineering school with liquid nitrogen ice cream. "The purpose of making liquid nitrogen ice cream is that everything freezes a lot quicker so that you don't get huge ice cream crystals so everything tastes a lot more creamy and fresh," said Chemical Engineering student Julie Blum.

You'll find fresh ideas like the Drink Botler. "The Drink Botler is a robot car which will transfer a Pepsi can from a station to a coaster," said creator Haisu Sha.

Some UNL students even built their own version of a Segway. The open house featured biomedical advances, a tour of the University's Robotics lab, high school and middle school engineering competition and more, including a speech from the so called "Engineering Comedian" Professor Pete Ludavice of Georgia Tech. "We have a horrible drop out rate, 40 percent in the first year and almost 60 percent overall."

So he takes a Larry The Cable Guy approach to keep engineers engaged. But you never heard Carl Sagen say something like in dealing with the billions of stars in the universe perhaps we should embrace the philosophy of our learned colleague Lawrence The Prevailer of High Band Width Telecommunications conduits and get her done." Ah, but it's working so far.

The open house masters the sweet science of showcasing the department.

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