In this video I follow four of my students (Kohei Muto, Eric Engelhardt, Clark Gaudry, and David Bernstein) as they build and program a small robot to autonomously navigate a maze, locate a flame, extinguish the flame, and then get back "home". In robotics, the word autonomous means "independent" or "having the ability to operate on one's own". The robot you see here is not a remote controlled device. Rather, my students program the robot's BX-24 microcontroller brain to react to stimuli in real time. In April 2008, these students will take their robot to fire fighting competitions at Penn State Abington and Trinity College in Hartford, CT.Robodyssey Systems manufactures the Mouse robot and RAMB II motherboard you see here. The robot's brain is NetMedia's BX-24 microcontroller, which is programmed using the BasicX language. I am the author of the world's only BasicX textbook; if you are interested in learning how to program your own robot, see my website at www.basicxandrobotics.com.