The Air Force uses HD-1 to locate explosives, move it to a safe location, and defuse it.

HD-1 is just one of the many Air Force robots local students got the chance to see in action this week. They were guests of Tyndall Air Force Base's Air Force research laboratory for a week-long event geared toward teaching them about robotics.

Friday's students were part of the championship "Math Counts" team from Merritt Brown Middle School.

John Fant, a Merritt Brown teacher, said, "By being able to come out here and interact with these working engineers, the students get more of an idea about what everyday working engineers do, and they get to look towards that as possibly a future profession."

For many of these kids, math and science are their favorite subjects, so engineering is right up their alley. Who knows?

Maybe one day they'll be the brains behind the bots, and the robotics research group at Tyndall hopes to give them that inspiration.

Brian Akibba with the robotics research group said, "Part of our mission and job is to do outreach and education to bring future leaders in science and technology up. Also, it helps our ability to keep our science and technology in the forefront to be able to defend America."

For now the kids are just having fun and playing with some pretty cool stuff.

Zachary Grouev, a student, said, "Oh, yeah. This is really fun. We get to drive around robots that should have bombs in them. What could be funner? We're learning about electronics and how this whole base stuff works, kinda how people who do this stuff work."

The Merritt Brown students are in the 6th and 7th grades. Air Force security forces use many of the robots for bomb disposal.