Toby Farms rookies advance in robotics competition
the 2018 Penn FLL Regional Championship on Feb. 10.
Students had a hard time containing their excitement.
“It’s fun. It’s almost like having a job, but it’s fun,” said Angelis Williams, 12, who loves technology, video games, cars and, now, robotics.
The students in the Chester Upland School District, many of whom come from underprivileged backgrounds and economically disadvantaged families, have found success in the most unlikely of places.
Principal René Garner said she was blessed to receive a phone call from Ravi Jain, a risk manager, options expert and financial technologist from Kennett Square, who offered to train and lead the robotics team at Toby Farms. With help of a grant, the team was established in October, six months after many of the other work.
However, the Cyber Panthers’ success Saturday was symbolic of their dedication before and after school to the robotics team, Garner said.
“We believe in them and that’s the message. You can (succeed) regardless that someone else may think negatively of you. You don’t have to accept that. That is not the end of the story. You choose what the end of the story is going to be,” Garner said.
Jain, who worked through a broken hand and taught both the A and B teams, was unable to attend Thursday due to a family emergency back in his native India, but wrote a lengthy blog post detailing his time with the students.
“Winning this prize at the competition means a lot more than most people can imagine for the teachers, teams had begun administrators and most of all for the students of Toby Farms. They rarely get such achievements to celebrate. It gives a sense of hope and confidence to these kids that they too are good enough and smart enough to compete with others. We hope it gives them the encouragement and excitement to remain inquisitive and try new things. The entire school is abuzz with excitement right now,” he wrote.
The Cyber Panthers were tasked with building, automating and troubleshooting a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kit, a Linux-based microcontroller that students program to run a variety of tasks, known as “missions,” on a standardized field mat. Thursday they detailed their troubleshooting process, to which MillerUueda drilled them on how and why they reached each conclusion.
“Did they just choose the easier missions or were they strategic about the points? The judges are looking for a lot of that stuff, the competition they’re going to now are the 48 best teams in Southeastern Pennsylvania. It’s intense, so I’m preparing them for some of those questions,” MillerUueda said.
To place in the competition, the robot needs to run multiple missions in a twominute window of time. The tasks include picking up objects and dropping them at different locations, flicking levers and maneuvering through obstacles. Robots in the competition are fully automated and will either respond to preprogrammed movements or can use a color sensor to follow bold black or white lines. It’s left to the students to figure out the most efficient means of problem solving.
They’ve also delved into the expertise of hydrodynamics, a theme of this year’s competition, building a prototype gutter that turns water into electricity using turbines. They hope to build a prototype sewer that will power street lights.
With zeal, the students dove into the presentation Thursday by hashing out tactical disagreements with kindness and patience, giving each other space to apply their own solutions and building upon the success of others.
“It went from Ravi telling them these things, to them believing it,” said mentor Theresa Ebersole, a seventh-grade science teacher at Toby Farms. “That was something that came together and it was nice to see that. Even when we didn’t think we were going to win anything, they were still empowered by the experience we had.”