"Here we go, I have this big servo ready to grab the toilet paper pharaoh."

It's not jibberish. It's the lingo of a dozen boys, ages 11-14, working at Thanksgiving Point on Saturday at the Mayan Adventure Lego Robotics day camp.

Evan Doman of Pleasant Grove is looking to teach his robot how to pick up a "pharaoh" made from either toilet paper or a toilet paper roll. A clutch of other young men have gathered around to offer advice.

"The robot will go alone and grab it and use a sensor to detect it -- OK, we figured out something. We are going to put a light sensor here and if it detects the color red, it will scoop up." Evan speaks all of this with the rapid-fire frenetic enthusiasm of a captivated youth. As it turns out, that's the whole point.

The camp, which cost $35 for the day, allows youth to borrow laptops and $300 Lego robot kits. The young men -- no girls signed up for Saturday's camp, to the chagrin of organizers -- then build the robots and program the robots, using the laptops, to perform certain commands. In this case, to find and pick up a Mayan mummy, or transverse a Mayan maze.

Spending time in the robot lab, it is easy to be intimidated. The boys use the laptops to program the robots as if they have been doing it their whole lives. And this reporter finally had to ask one of the boys to define the word servo, just one of the jargon words the boys were throwing around as if they were long-time veterans of creating robots with an archeological bent.

A servo, just in case you didn't know either, "is like a mechanical joint," says Evan, pausing for just a moment to wonder why this reporter wouldn't know that already.

The laptops and robot kits were purchased with both state and private grants, and belong to the 4-H program. Though they are stored at Thanksgiving Point, the equipment gets little rest, said Dave Francis, a 4-H youth development specialist with the Utah State Univeristy Extension Service. So popular is the robotics program that the equipment is in regular circulation around the state. For Saturday's event it had to be borrowed for the weekend from an after-school program that had borrowed it for the week from the state.

The effort is all part of a statewide effort to spark youth interest in science, engineering and technology.

"The whole point is one million ideas and one million new scientists," said Francis. "We recognize the need to get the next generation of scientists, engineers and technologists looking out for careers."

Not many families can spring for a $300 Lego Mindstorm robot building kit, he said, but some can afford to pay $35 for the day camp. And if that day really sparks an interest, sometimes parents take a second look at providing equipment to encourage their child.

Some of the boys at Saturday's event might go on to form a 4-H robotics club to continue their interest, for example, Francis said. Those clubs give youth a place to hone their skills and compete in robotics contests.

The camps are also used to provide opportunities for boys from lower income families. Four boys at Saturday's camp had their fees sponsored because they have a parent on active military duty.

And though the robotics and the Mayan focus have been chosen to spark the imagination, there is another element to the camp Àú teaching life skills including how to work as a team, how to solve problems, and how to interact with other youth with similar interests, Francis said.

"Software is constantly changing but the life skills will be with them forever," he said.

For the boys, its just pure fun. When asked, teasingly, by this reporter if they secretly wanted to slip away with the robot kits and take them home while no one was looking, the boys immediately got creative.

"If everyone here suddenly went blind, we could take this big box out," said Evan with a laugh.

Working at an adjacent table, Kaden Nielson suggests a laser could be arranged to help with that.

At one point, Evan and his friend Brenon Jensen have finished programming a robot and they put it on the floor to test whether or not it will actually do what they hope they have taught it to do. Using the laptop, they have told the robot that when it approaches an object, it should turn to avoid the object once the object is five inches away.

To test this, they set the robot on the floor in front of a box and turn it on. Instead of marching toward the box, the robot begins to spin in circles.

"It didn't work," Evan announces. Just at that moment, the boys are called to a pizza lunch. They move to another room, but when the pizza doesn't appear immediately, they get impatient. They want to get back to working out the kinks in the programming for the robots.