Traverse City Area Public Schools’ SCI-MA-TECH (SMT) and  TBAISD Career-Tech Center’s (CTC) Manufacturing Technology Academy (MTA) will co-host roboticist and inventor James McLurkin on Friday, May 4, 2007, at Lars Hockstad Auditorium, Central Grade School, 301 W. Seventh Street. McLurkin’s presentation, “Dances with Robots: The Story of One Engineer, 112 Little Robots and the Toys, Insects, and Star Wars Movies that Made It All Possible,” will begin at 7:30 p.m.

Prior to the program, local student-designed robots will be on display beginning at 6:30 p.m. Robots will include Lego Mindstorms robots from FIRST Lego League teams, FIRST Robotics Competition robots, and underwater remotely operated robots.

Ticket prices are $5.00 in advance or $8.00 at the door. Ticket sales for this event will benefit both the SMT and MTA programs.

McLurkin, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, will deliver a robotics presentation and demonstrate his swarm robots on stage. James McLurkin is a leader in the field of distributed robotic systems. As manager of the iRobot Swarm project, he developed the world’s largest swarm or robots and software algorithms to control them as a group. He has appeared on NOVA ScienceNow and been recognized as one of five leading robotics engineers in their “Rise of Machines” feature, and by Black Enterprise magazine as a “Best and Brightest Under 40.”

“Dances with Robots” is generously sponsored by the TBAISD Career-Tech Center, North Bay Energy, The Good Works Fund of Rotary Charities of Traverse City, Northwestern Bank, Britten Banners, and Air Way Automation.

To purchase tickets in advance or for more information, please call John Failor (SMT) at 933-3554 or Debby Oliver (MTA) at 995-1304.