NOT JUST ROBOTS
Contest helps participants develop various skills
As building robots goes, Tiago Alfonso Wells, 11, of Swissvale likes programming them, a fact apparent from the zeal with which he thumbed through code on a laptop screen Saturday during a competition at La Roche College in McCandless.
Teammate Alys Campbell, 10, also of Swissvale, enjoys a more mechanical aspect of the job: assembling the creations with Legos of various shapes, sizes and colors.
“It’s fun,” she said. “You can build so many different things.”
Their talents and interests may differ, but how well the pair and other teammates coalesced around their robot and a related research project determined their success among hundreds of competing elementary and middle schools students from Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia.
That, at least in part, is the idea behind the Western Pennsylvania FIRST LEGO League Grand Championship, held Friday evening and Saturday.
The event promotes interest in the “STEM” fields of science, technology, engineering and math, said Marcel Bergerman, one of the organizers. But it also encourages good communication skills by requiring the students to develop and present their research before tournament officials, he said.
Part of the judging also involves core values that include teamwork and gracious professionalism as the robot-builders go about their work.
Many of the 80-plus teams of up to 10 members each were developed around neighborhoods, schools or churches. The six members of Swissvale’s “RoboCatz” team all live near the library in Swissvale, and since September, they have spent time including Saturday mornings there working together on their project.
Their coach, Jeffrey Kandra, said he’s learned over the years that designing a robot to be completely autonomous, as the competition requires, can mean different things to different groups of children.
“Some teams’ [robots] are all loaded up with sensors, while other teams are more mechanical. They don’t have a robot that knows where it is.”
He said neither approach is wrong. “It’s just a different strategy,” said Mr. Kandra, who became a coach when his daughter was young enough to compete but still leads the team even though she is in college.
The robots are small enough to operate on a table-top and have two-and-a-half minutes to perform between 15 and 20 different tasks, such as picking up items or maneuvering around obstructions, participants said.
“They are allowed to press the start button, but they can’t touch it after that,” said Gordon Walton, tournament director.
“That separates them from even most of the high school robotics where everyone is on joysticks and controllers,” he said.
“This is not operating [a] machine. This is about designing and programming a machine.”
The rows of projects — some with posters explaining them — that were spread across the basketball court inside the Kerr Fitness Center gave the event the feel of a science fair. But with children carrying colorful signs and in some cases cheering, like those in support of “Rogue Robots” from Mt. Lebanon, it also felt like a sporting event.
On either end of the court, groups clustered around a projector screen onto which results were displayed for teams with such names as “Knights of Code,” “Frankenbots” and “The Muskagears”
This year’s theme was “Animal Allies,” and students were asked to identify and speak with experts about a potential problem created when animals and humans interact and to come up with a way to improve the situation.
It wasn’t hard to spot members of the “Foxes’ Fury” from Fox Chapel. They were wearing orangeand-white hats with ears intended to give them a foxlike look.
Their research problem focused on potential harm that can come from fear people have of animals, and the solution was a web site fearfix.org they created. “It basically has a lot of virtual reality videos with animals, because research shows that spending time with your fears can help cure them,” Marnie McCormick, 12, a team member. “They can do it from the comfort of their own home.”
Late Saturday, “Animatronics” from Pittsburgh and their members Owen Prem, Nate Sirlin, Ethen Oh, Felipe Bergerman and Kush Bandi were announced as First Place Champions and First Place Robot Performance. They are coached by Sanjay and Arvind Seshan.
In April, Animatronics will be headed to World Festival in St. Louis to compete against 100 other Champion teams from around the world, organizers said.
The Second Place Champion’s team was Sharon Tiger Techs from Sharon, Pa.