The nuclear power plant accidents in Chernobyl, Ukraine (1986) and Fukushima, Japan (2011) provide the real-world context for the robotics work that is currently undertaken by students at ConVal High School.
The assignment is to build a robot that can pick up radioactive debris from a nuclear power plant explosion. The robot is joystick-controlled, and the debris must be placed in a bucket. To make the assignment even more realistic, there is a 3-minute time limit for picking up the debris.
In this photograph, a 9th-grade robotics student works on the robot’s drivetrain.