Penn State Altoona engineering student inspires youth with robotics camp

ALTOONA, Pa. — As a second-year mechanical engineering student at Penn State Altoona, Carlos Segura’s passions are design, innovation and hands-on problem-solving.

He enjoys sharing that enthusiasm with his classmates as well as anyone who has an interest in engineering, he said. This semester, he received approval to start the Altoona Engineering Collective student organization. As founder and president, Segura said he is committed to building a strong, collaborative community open to everyone on campus, no matter their major. He’s planning workshops and hands-on projects and said he hopes the club can participate in engineering competitions.

There is no age limit to who Segura will share engineering with. This past summer, he took his eagerness to Jamaica, an island he knows well.

For the last nine years, he has spent part of his summers in Westmoreland, Jamaica, the westernmost parish of the island. Within that parish is Cairn Curran, the hometown of his maternal grandparents.

It’s in that small town that Segura and his mother host a “back to school bash” each August for school-aged children. There’s music, food, games and activities, as well as raffles for things like tablets, computers, and school supplies. The whole thing is funded by Segura’s mother with money she saves throughout the year and donations from family and friends.

This year, Segura added to the event with a week-long robotics camp for local students in second through eighth grade.

His own love of engineering developed at the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) middle school he attended in his hometown of Orlando, Florida, he said. He joined the school’s robotics team and was paired with an enthusiastic mentor, a mechanical engineer, who explained all about robots, how they were designed, and how they worked. In high school he took part in many different robotic and design competitions including FIRST Robotics Competition, FIRST Tech Challenge, and Lockheed Martin’s CYBERQUEST.

“I’ve always been fascinated by learning new technology,” he said. “I hoped that I could make other kids feel the same way.”

After coming up with the idea for the robotics camp, Segura said, he reached out to the principal of Cairn Curran Primary School, who was immediately on board. Together, they worked through logistics and talked about the best way for all students to participate, understand, and enjoy the project.

Segura decided on a MakeBlock mBot2, a STEM coding education robot kit which included the robot to build, a controller and coding software. He purchased the kit with his own money.

The free camp ran four hours a day for a week in August. About 25 students attended.

To build the robot, Segura split students into groups based on their age and put together an assembly line of sorts.

“Groups put together their pieces, then passed them on to the next station until we assembled the wheels, the claws, the chassis, and the suspension for the robot," he said.

Segura hooked his laptop up to the school’s government-issued whiteboard to access the robot’s software. The group then learned how to code the robot to make it go, stop, and perform multiple tasks.

Segura said the project offered all aspects of STEM and showed students how they all connected. He added that it also taught problem-solving through hands-on experience.

Segura said he enjoyed watching the students have fun and loved seeing the excitement in their eyes during each stage of the project. He hopes to have inspired a new generation of STEM professionals.

“I wanted them to see that STEM is fun, but I also wanted them to understand the significance of it," he said. "STEM will always be changing and advancing. It’s our future and the backbone of innovation and economic growth.”

Segura said he plans to offer the camp again this summer and hopes more kids from neighboring towns and villages will be able to take part, as well.

“It gives me a lot of joy to do this camp, especially in Jamaica where my family is from," he said. "But it also gives me motivation to keep going in school and to be successful.”