Four high performance assembly robots sit on a table in room D122A of the Engineering Building. Everything remains motionless but Joseph Barbay, a professor of Engineering.

Barbay programs a command into a keyboard, two feet behind the metal masses, which suddenly become animated with robotic arms slowly rising and stretching as if they are reaching for something very fragile.

Barbay reminds the room that the command he sent the robot was only set on a speed of ten. He punches in a code on the keyboard and the machine returns to its home position, or the original position of the robot. Barbay then resets the program to a speed of 100 and the robot moves quicker than the eye.

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On behalf of the department, Barbay said he accepted 10 Seiko robots from some of his former students who are now employed at Motorola.

Barbay received the robots three days before Thanksgiving and he said his students recently assembled them. He said the robots will be used for students to learn about robotics.

The 327 pound robots were originally used to make Motorola pagers, and the high-quality robots are now an asset to SIUC, Barbay said.

If you say the word robots,’ it energizes the students. The Seiko D-TRAN RT 3000’s have really been an asset to the University and especially to my students, he said.

Out of the ten robots, seven are fully operational. Barbay said if it wasn’t for the students, the robots would not be in operation.

I bet my class a pizza dinner that they couldn’t figure out the robots, and within two hours, seven of them (the robots) were up and working, he said. I had to literally pull them away from the remaining robots to go eat their pizza.

The robots will be used in five of Barbay’s classes. Two of those classes are Engineering Technology 332 and Engineering Technology 438. Students of these two classes have specifically been instrumental in helping install the robots, Barbay said.

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The new robots that Barbay and his students will be enjoying are worth a total of $350,000, Barbay said.

The amount the robots are worth is not nearly worth the experience the students will receive, Kesha Bolden, a senior in electrical engineering technology from Peoria, and one of the students who helped assemble the robots, said.

I feel that these robots will help us prepare more for the future, she said. Technology is changing everyday, and these newer models can only improve our technical skills.