By MARY KAY MOREL, Motoman Inc., edited by RICHARD S. MANDEL

Robots are cool. Everyone knows that, especially anyone exposed to Hollywood fare such as Forbidden Planet, Short Circuit, and a host of others. Robot toys have become increasingly sophisticated several years ago, Radio Shack offered a miniature version of an industrial robot and, more recently, Lego offered a robot-building kit with a programmable controller.

Motoman Inc., West Carrollton, Ohio, is one company encouraging children and young adults to learn about robotic technology, and promotes their interest in technical training and engineering careers. The Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) in Chicago, Ill., opened a permanent exhibit in 2003 featuring eight Motoman robots that perform choreographed moves to music, play games, draw pictures and assemble a puzzle. Additionally, the exhibit includes a video kiosk where visitors learn about people involved in the field of robotics and about possible careers in the automation industry.

The company frequently hosts groups of young people from universities, schools and youth organizations for tours of their manufacturing facility and the Motoman Technical Education Center (MTEC) located at the company's headquarters, which has 57 robots and eight full-time instructors in nine classrooms.

"We take the kids into our training classrooms where we have six-axis robots mounted on the desktops. There, they receive hands-on experience using the teach pendant to move the various robot axes around and create some simple point-to-point robot programs," says Steve Holland, Motoman's manager of technical education.

"The video games these kids play actually help develop and enhance hand-to-eye coordination, which is helpful when programming the robots," Holland notes. "We find that kids tend to take to robot programming easily because for them it's like playing with a big toy."

"It was awesome to be able to work on programming some robots in the lab," says Brandon Bruns, an eighth-grade student from the Quest Math & Science Enrichment Program at the Bishop Leibold school in Miamisburg, Ohio. "I liked trying to get our robot to pick something up; it was pretty complicated! I knew robots are often used to assemble, but I had no idea about the ways they could be programmed to do so many different things."

Last month, Motoman hosted a group of seven pre-engineering students from the University of Cincinnati interested in Computer Integrated Manufacturing and Computer-Aided Design, along with several gifted high-school students from a group called the Amateur Scientist Development Team. Their mentor, Dr. Kenneth K. Brown, said that the students are currently involved with building micro-controlled miniature robots called "bo-bots," but that they eventually want to get involved with robots up to this type of level.

"I really don't know what I want to do yet, but I want to do something using math and science. This definitely is interesting," Rebecca Moser, a high-school student from Milford, Ohio, commented following the tour.