In the late 90s, I teamed up with my father (also named Aristides Alvarez) to open a Robotics workshop in Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
This was the first Robotics workshop of its kind in Latin America. It was not a research lab in a university, which is usually limited to theoretical robotics (Universities in Argentina didn’t have lab equipment at that time).
Our “Curso de Robotica” had the opposite approach:
- Classes were entirely hands-on. Any theory was explained by working directly on hardware.
- All robots and automation projects were run by programmed microcontrollers. The students had to program the microcontrollers themselves.
- Students were either at the high school level or local hobbyists.
- The workshop was certified by the local government Vo-Tech school system and provided official certificates for the graduates.
Our robotics workshop was also an early adopter of the internet (at least early for Argentina) and you can see some records of an early website using the Wayback Machine and searching for “cursoderobotica.com.ar”.
The workshop was conducted in Spanish and I had to translate all the current documentation available from Parallax Inc into English.
The main microcontroller we used was the BASIC Stamp, which was the most popular microcontroller for hobby and education in the US at the time. Just for reference, this class started 10 years before the Arduino was created.
We run different programs within this workshop:
- Programming microcontrollers
- Robotics with the Boe-Bot (an educational robot from the US)
- Home automation
- Recycled robotics (robots made from scavenged parts like stepper motors from old printers and rechargeable batteries from electric drills, all managed by the programmed microcontroller)
As I moved to the US to work for Parallax in 2002, the “Curso de Robotica” continued running for several years until my father retired.
Sadly we couldn’t find any teachers to continue running this course. We were probably too early for our time.
One of the reasons I came to work at Parallax was to push for more electronics, programming, and robotics instruction in Latin America.
But only now we seem to be getting to the point where most countries in Latin America could start including Computer Science (CS) into their educational systems.
I will be working with Parallax, The Microbit Educational Foundation, and Raspberry Pi to popularize CS in Latin America and other underrepresented regions.