ASHLAND, NE USA — Jake Tuma is a maker.
The 10-year-old Lincoln boy already mastered the Lego Robotics set he received for Christmas, transforming its piles of plastics and electronics into a realistic lunar rover and an electric guitar that uses a sensor and slider to play notes.
But Saturday, he embarked on a whole new challenge: engineering a remote-controlled car out of junk.
A group of University of Nebraska-Lincoln engineering students helped Tuma and hundreds of others wire, program and race their vehicles around the Strategic Air & Space Museum’s giant aircraft as part of its first Robot Junkyard Wars event, which coincided with an ongoing robotics exhibition.
The UNL students were familiar with building things from scratch.
They’re all members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and when they’re not doing homework, they’re designing lunar rovers, building 12-foot rockets and holding conferences with NASA.
Even they were impressed with some of Saturday’s creations.
“We had a father and son really knock it out of the park,” civil engineering student Bryan Kubitschek said. “They assembled the thing in less than an hour and made it around the track in a minute and 19 seconds.”