By Meredith Gorfein Rappahannock News Writer Jaclyn Dixon, age

By Meredith Gorfein

Rappahannock News Writer

Jaclyn Dixon, age 11, is a newcomer to Rappahannock and a newcomer to robotics. Although new to the world of robotics she has recently worked with one of its most well-known scientists.

On Aug. 12 she and the members of the First Lego League (FLL) team from Culpeper participated in an urban search and rescue workshop which w-as part of the Annual Naval-Industry Research and Development Partnership Conference. The workshop and conference took place at the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center in Washington, DC.

FLL is an international robotics program for nine to 14 year-old students. A team uses Lego pieces to design, construct and program a robot. The goal is to “captivate kids’ interest in science and technology as they master the dynamics of teamwork and problem solving.”

This handful of children along with a First Lego League team from Quantico was sitting with and surrounded by over 100 business, industry and military leaders. At the beginning, they felt ever so slightly out of place.

They started feeling more comfortable as Dr. Robin Murphy, the lead roboticist at the World Trade Center disaster and Director of the Center for Robot Assisted Search & Rescue <CRASAR), spoke to the audience about her use of small portable robots which could seek out heat, light, motion and flesh colors. She had begun focussing her work on the kind of robot which could go where humans and dogs could not after the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Within a few hours of the WTC attack, Dr. Murphy, three graduate students and their six search-and-rescue robots drove non-stop from the University of South Florida to Ground Zero. It would be the first application of search-andrescue robots in a real disas