DCYSC…and Beyond!

The California State Science Fair may be over, but I still have much work to do for this year’s project. Tomorrow, I will start work on an application for my next science competition, the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge. The top forty best projects registered for the competition receive an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C. to compete for a top prize of $20,000.

In addition to this competition, I am also working on a presentation to my science class in my school about my project and about how students can get involved in the science fair. For this presentation, I am assembling a PowerPoint display, creating a documentary video about the California State Science Fair, and possibly creating a demo video showing how the robot would be used.

Finally, I am working on next year’s project. For next year, I want to research robotic swarm algorithms. This means that I want to make several robots work together as a team, or swarm, to construct a map of an area. Since this will require building multiple identical robots and each robot unit currently costs over $300, I will be working on ways to cut the cost of building a robot in half. I have already figured out how to make treads that are much stronger than the current ones, yet are a fifth of the cost.