Students of UW Tacoma’s Computing and Software Systems program watch as a hand-built robot navigates a patch on the floor which represents food. The robot is one of several designed by Mobile Robotics students as part of their final projects, which were on display yesterday in the Cherry Parkes Building. Starting with a toy robot kit from Lego, students added more sophisticated programming software and applied what they have learned in their class to create an “animat” robot, which simulates what animals do, such as search for food and react to stimulus. Students also researched robotics and projected into the future what that field might look like 20 years from now, as if writing articles for Scientific American magazine in 2026.