Inventing by trial, error, and teamwork

A wheelchair that pivots by the power of thought. A sensor that records when a person falls down. A snow detector that tells plows where they're needed. Designed and built by high school students, these inventions and more lined the floor at the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams Odyssey yesterday morning.

Each year, high schools from around the country take part in the InvenTeams program, which provides up to $10,000 per team for students to engineer inventions of their own choosing. This year, 18 teams participated, including three teams from New England.

``We see it very much as MIT's mission to promote inventiveness and creativity among kids," said Merton C. Flemings, an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, which recognizes and supports invention.

A high school teacher works with students throughout the summer to brainstorm and propose a final concept.

Selected teams then receive funding to carry their projects forward during the school year, and present their inventions at the annual Odyssey.

Although the teachers act as mentors, the students control the project, said Bill Church, a physics teacher at Littleton High School in Littleton, N.H. ``Really, these guys have done it all on their own," he said. ``It's been very impressive."

In 2003, the Littleton team invented an underground system to redirect the high school's waste heat underneath its sidewalks, to melt ice on walkways without salt or plowing.

The school installed the system during a sidewalk renovation the following year.

This year, three students decided to expand the project by designing a remote snow sensor to help the town's highway department know where to send plows.

``We had to figure out something that could detect when the snow fell and then confirm it" for the highway department, said team member Tom Sundman, a senior.

Their devices, no larger than a toaster and costing less than $400 each, house several meteorological sensors that collect data on temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure, then report the information via a wireless connection to the Internet. If conditions look right for snow, a webcam then takes pictures to confirm.

Because the system will watch over many locations at once, the team named it Argus, after the 100-eyed giant of Greek mythology. (To see it in action, go to http://projectargus.servegame.com.)

The Littleton Highway Department plans to collaborate with the students to install the system next year, said Town Manager Jason Hoch.

``More towns should find a way to embrace" the InvenTeams program, said Hoch. ``It's helping students learn, and it's bringing creativity and innovation to solve a town problem."

Students from the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Roxbury decided to invent an automatic blackboard eraser, inspired by a teacher whose asthma flared up when exposed to chalk dust. The team struggled to overcome technical problems.

``I learned a lot about teamwork and hard work," said Lidza Louina. ``It took a long time to make this, a lot of trial and error."

Louina will attend the University of Massachusetts at Boston this fall, where she plans to study computer engineering. She and her teammates, all seniors, graduate today.

``I was always interested in technology," she said. ``This helped encourage me."