Rise of the robotics programs
Tech tinkering to send Lodi students to Google robotics competition
Tyler Smeenk, an eighth-grade student, held what appeared to be a gaming controller while moving a robot across a foam mat with his thumbs. He and other members of the Lodi Middle School Robotics Club were prepping their new robots for competition on Thursday afternoon.
The robot was equipped with a large wide fork attachment to a moveable arm which he used to pick up a foam starshaped piece.
“It’s based on a forklift,” said Nicolaus Hilleary, an eighth grader who was also working on the robot.
He tried to flip the fork up to send the star up and over the height of 25 feet, but it got stuck in the bend of the robot’s arm for the first few runs. His group worked to rearrange parts and adjust a gear chain before trying again.
The robotics program headed by teacher Steve Box at Lodi Middle School is still in its infancy. Although students are already eager and very engaged in using tools and programming skills in the classroom, the competitive team has had a slow start due to the need to gather funding. GOT Kids Foundation, the Robotics Education and Competition (REC) Foundation and several local businesses and organizations have lent their support to Lodi Middle’s program.
Donations were especially important as the Vex Robotics sets needed to get started cost between $1,000 and $1,200.
Students received the first three VEX Robotics sets in December of last year and have been working diligently to put together functioning robots for a big competition this coming Saturday.
Their destination is the Google campus in Mountain View to compete in the Google VEX Starstruck tournament against schools from all over Northern California. The goal is to build a robot that can toss cubes and stars over a fence at a 20 foot height and 29 foot height to score points for their team and also robots that can block the opponent from tossing items over from the other side of the fence. Rounds are timed and the ones who toss the most items over the fence by the end win.
“It’s like sports for the nerds,” Hilleary said.
Given the short amount of time they’ve spent with the robots, the team is not expecting a big win right away, but instead are hoping to gain experience to bring back. With that the team can be better prepared for future competitions.
In addition to putting their robot building and programming skills to the test, students will also get to tour the Google campus to see what it’s like inside the giant technology company.
Students spent Thursday testing the controls of a fully-constructed robot, which was hand-programmed by a seventh-grade student in the class. They had to record logs of everything they changed or did during the preparation for the competition in an engineering notebook.
“One team went to nationals just because they had a great engineering notebook,” Hilleary said.
In another group, three seventh-grade girls were working on tightening bolts and nuts to attach a metal panel to a set of two robotic arms.
The panels were meant to block enemy fire of stars and cubes over the fence.
“We had some minor mistakes. When the arm comes up, it’s too flimsy and is not able to block,” said Madison Gallard, a seventh grader.
Classmates came over to offer suggestions as they tinkered such as, “can you add another motor here” and “what if you extend this part?” Despite being sectioned off into groups, there was a sense of working together ever present in the room.
The troubleshooting and creativity that students apply to figure out how to make their robots work are invaluable skills for them to learn, according to Box.
Until they experience failure and have to solve those problems, they won’t know how they’re doing, he said.
They build, test and then evaluate if the robot is doing what they need it to do.
“The kids have learned a lot. It’s a very student-driven process,” Box said. “When you own the learning process you get more out of it.”
Box is also working on creating an engineering course at Tokay High School so students who move up from Lodi Middle School can continue to build on what they’ve learned in his robotics class and in the after school competitive team. Outside of robotics, Box also teaches the Manufacturing Principles class at Lincoln Technical Academy and coaches basketball.
He is glad to be able to offer this kind of program for students and get them engaged in school in their middle school years.
“The kids have learned a lot. It’s a very student-driven process,” Box said. “When you own the learning process you get more out of it.”