Recently, on Oct. 7, the Engineering and Design Development Class (EDD) took a field trip to visit the Garner Holt Productions main headquarters located in Redlands, CA. The trip took the entire day and included a full tour and displays of animatronics created by the company. Garner Holt Productions is the biggest animatronic company that produces robots for Disney and the military. 

Their actual field trip served to give students insight on how a professional corporation creates animatronics. Sophomore Ethan Wong found the robot that has a “phone cutting arm with a drill” interesting out of all the animatronics displayed. The EDD class has had several field trips like this, whether it be to JPL or UC Irvine. 

The EDD class was originally named “Advanced Robotics”, but its namesake was changed six years back; the original class began in 2001. Requirements to enroll are for students to have at least one year in Engineering, meaning that they must be familiar with design software and building products. One unique trait about this class is the freedom students receive. Bill Chapman, the teacher and adviser, said that his job is primarily to “keep the students legal and safe.” When he assigns a problem for the students to work on, it’s the students’ job to take initiative and work with each other. Teams or groups are formed, and they are expected to solve a certain part of the problem, all while collaborating with each other. Students aren’t graded on the effectiveness of their robot but more on how well they work together and communicate. 

The feats that EDD accomplish are not small. One interesting story was that they had to build a robot that can scale a wall as fast as possible. The class had six weeks to design and build the robot, and their solution was to have the robot feed a rope into a pulley system and winch itself up. EDD often competes at high-level academic competitions, such as the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) invention contests and represents NASA’s Science Lab. 

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