Robot

Anthony Daniels admits that being a pop icon can get old. But the man who played the gleaming gold robot C-3PO in all six "Star Wars" movies is by no means complaining. When hundreds of thousands of people have been so touched by your work, it's hard to stay too down. "Yes, there were times when it felt old, and almost - I'm going to use the word 'embarrassing,' without meaning to be unkind," says the 63-year-old British actor, who will be at 1st Mariner Arena Wednesday night to serve as narrator for "Star Wars in Concert," a multimedia presentation of John Williams' Oscar-winning scores, complete with orchestra, a huge movie screen and all manner of light effects.

A team of Howard County students scored first place in one category of the 2009 International Botball Tournament, an educational robotics competition. Three teenagers who attend Cedar Brook Academy, a private school in Clarksburg in Montgomery County, worked for about four months to develop a mobile, autonomous robot, winning the judge's choice award at the regional level and topping the Alliance Match category at the international level in July. "My favorite part for the past couple years has been winning," said Ethan Myers, 16, the team captain, who's been competing annually since sixth grade.

Team 888 from Glenelg High School gathered at 7 a.m. Thursday in the school's parking lot, a bit sleep-deprived perhaps, but definitely pumped up. The night before, 12 students had checked off 1,500 pounds of supplies on a lengthy packing list in preparation for their 10-hour journey to the Indiana Robotics Invitational, an elite competition for the top 72 teams in the world. Along with the robot they designed and built, their team was transporting tools, spare parts, extension cords, 12-volt gel batteries and chargers - anything members might possibly need during the two-day event that ended Saturday.

The wizardry of computer graphics has become so other-worldly that it's easy to imagine the army of specialists that worked on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hidden in some underground laboratory-bunker, scurrying like super-intelligent lab rats to create "sights no one has ever seen before" under the excruciating pressure of a hugely expensive franchise picture. But the role of visual effects supervisor is as hands-on and real-world as jobs come. Industrial Light and Magic's Scott Farrar has performed it to perfection on both Transformers pictures.

A Johns Hopkins University engineering professor helped guide an underwater vehicle this week to one of the coldest, darkest, most remote places on Earth. Louis Whitcomb and his team - safe and dry aboard a research vessel in the western Pacific - guided the 18-foot-long robotic submersible Nereus by remote control as it plunged to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. The dive marked the first time since 1998 that man has probed so far into the crushing depths of the Earth's greatest abyss.

Emily Schultheis never imagined that her love of tomatoes would translate into success in science. But that's what happened when her parents challenged her to explore a way to make it easier to pick her favorite fruit. "Ever since I was little, I liked to eat tomatoes," the 15-year-old sophomore at Glenelg High School said. "It was more fun to eat them than to pick them." Two years ago, Schultheis began working on a way to pick tomatoes using robotics. Her research has evolved into the award-winning project with a tongue-twister of a title: "Optical Feedback Improves the Accuracy of an Autonomous Robotic Arm That Will Pick Ripe Tomatoes."

A builder's plan for a contentious robotic garage downtown was turned down yesterday by the city's Urban Design and Architecture Review Panel, whose members questioned the proposed building's height and aesthetics. At yesterday's meeting, the developer, David H. Hillman, asked for a 402-space garage, serviced by what was described as "space age" technology. The garage building, which would be faced with 22 apartment units, has been planned at 18 W. Saratoga St. for five years. Over the past decade, Hillman has converted or renovated numerous downtown office buildings, apartment structures and department stores as living units.

With U.S. and allied military convoys under increasing attack in Afghanistan, the Army began work yesterday on a new test track at Harford County's Aberdeen Proving Ground that will be critical in developing high-speed unmanned, or robot, vehicles for convoy duty. When the two-lane, 4.5-mile gravel track is finished next fall, the Army will be able to test up to 20 heavy-armored manned and unmanned vehicles traveling at maximum speeds for hours at a time, officials said. The military's reliance on dangerous-road convoys in Afghanistan and elsewhere is fueling an urgent Pentagon demand for more high-speed armored vehicles and robot vehicles.

Sarah Price may have had her scrubs on, but she was not prepared to operate. The 6-year-old who won a contest to name the new surgical robot at Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie shook her head vigorously from side to side when the nurse asked her if she wanted to practice using "Poppy". The nurses soon coaxed Sarah to climb into the chair, peer through the viewfinder and thread her thumbs and index fingers through the loops on the fingertip controls. By pinching her fingers together and moving her wrists, she could manipulate the tiny clippers on the arms of the $1.7 million robot to grab rubber loops and place them on small rubber cones.

There is nothing simple about building an underwater robot to probe for salinity or look for water creatures. Wires come loose. Cameras fall off. Measuring string sinks to the bottom. "It's fun, but it's kind of frustrating," said Edwin Pena, who will enter eighth grade at Annapolis Middle School this month. Edwin and a dozen other rising seventh through ninth-graders spent the past two weeks building underwater devices made of PVC pipes, duct tape and small motors. The students sent the crude Remote Operating Vehicles, or ROVs, on missions to collect water samples and take pictures.