Wednesday, May 1, 2002

Teens' robot gets drunk

Greater Lawrence Technical School students learned lessons about alcohol consumption and project management when they built a robot called "Bionically Bent."

By Ethan Forman
Eagle-Tribune Writer

ANDOVER -- A student poured salt from a beer bottle into a funnel attached to what looks like a Lego set, a science experiment and an arcade game all topped by an ostrich head.

The odd device then began to simulate what happens to someone who drinks too much beer: The machine got drunk.

Greater Lawrence Technical School junior Cesar Pimentel (left), 17, pours salt into "Bionically Bent" from a beer bottle as engineer John Galinato watches. The salt simulates beer in the blood stream, and the robot reacts to it by getting ''drunk." The robot's reflexes slow down.

The device, which students named "Bionically Bent," responded to drinking "beer" -- in this case, salt poured into a funnel to simulate alcohol poured into one's stomach.

Not only did 40 students in the advanced science and technology cluster at Greater Lawrence Technical School learn about the effects of alcohol on the human body, they learned how to work together on a complex project.

Over the past two weeks, students broke into three groups to build, market and manage the project.

The goals were to create a device to educate young people on the effects of drinking beer; to build it on time, to attract the media; to raise $100 for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and to have something to put on a resume.

Junior Cesar Pimentel, the student who poured the salt, even wrote a rap tune about the project, something one can hear on the project's Web site, www.build-it-yourself.com/glts/index.html.

The machine actually weighed the salt by reading a scale using a sophisticated light sensor. The more salt, the more drunk