The University of Central Arkansas will host its second annual AI robotics and ethics camp June 22-27 for Arkansas students in grades 9-12 for the upcoming academic year.
The camp will take place in the Conway Corp Center for Sciences on the UCA campus.
During the week, student teams will learn programming and hardware skills to build and test machine learning algorithms to train and autonomously test-drive a robot car. Additionally, students will engage with artificial intelligence and robotics topics from a moral and ethical perspective.
The week culminates in a competition where the teams showcase what they have learned. This team competition is on Friday, June 27, starting at 1:30 p.m. The awards presentation will immediately follow the competition at 3:30 p.m.
“The field of artificial intelligence and machine learning is growing rapidly with direct applications to robotics (self-driving cars), with implications for society. We believe Arkansas students can understand, program, and build an AI-powered self-driving car and also consider the philosophical, ethical and moral issues that come with this technology,” said William Slaton, AEGIS camp director and UCA professor and engineering physics coordinator. “These camps give these students the knowledge and confidence to understand these topics and continue to pursue them in the future.”
A schedule for the week can be found here.
Selected campers are those who have taken at least one computer science course and are familiar with these topics:
- Computational thinking and problem solving
- Data, information, and security
- Algorithms and programs
- Computers and communications, and
- Professionalism and impacts of computing
The camp is funded by the Arkansas Department of Education’s Academic Enrichment for Gifted/Talented in Summer (AEGIS) program, so there is no cost to participants.
Media are invited to attend throughout the week. For more information, visit the AEGIS camp.