STUDENTS PUT TOGETHER TEAMWORK BRICK BY BRICK
Lego robotics competition inspires budding engineers at local ThunderQuest event
Michigan State University computer science major Noah Vermeulen discovered his passion for computer engineering through participating in robotics competitions as an elementary, middle school and high school student.
“Had I not participated, I would not have known how much I loved computer programming,” said Vermeulen. “I might have majored in something else and realized it wasn’t for me and had to start over with something different, but because of all of my experience with programming robots I already knew what I wanted my career to be.”
Saturday the Utica Community Schools Thunder Quest event — the state’s largest Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) regional Lego robotics tournament — took place at. Utica Ford II High School in Sterling Heights. The event featured 36 Challenge level teams, for ages 8-12, and seven Explore teams, for ages 6-10.
“Michigan is a huge state for robotics and at one time, we had more competitors than all of the other states combined,” said head judge Dan Champoux. “We are still the leading state for competitors.”
The focus is on problem solving. While it is a competition, Thunder Quest is not meant to be cut throat. Students learn about teamwork not only within their own teams, but in terms of interacting with other teams as well.
“If the opposing team’s battery dies, you’re going to lend them a spare,” said Champoux. “It would be like engineers from General Motors and Ford sharing information in order to solve a problem.”
Gracious professionalism and working together for the greater good are themes of the competition.
Lego robotics also helps prepare young engineers and sci-
entists for the real world. Sometimes a robot that a team has spent a great deal of time developing and that has performed flawlessly during practice sessions suddenly goes awry during competition. Students are taught to use their problem-solving skills to troubleshoot the issue.
As one Webber Wonders team member articulated it to the judges’ panel: “It messes up sometimes and it’s not our fault and it’s not the robot’s fault.”
At the Challenge level, teams build and program a Lego robot that then must perform certain tasks, called missions, in 2.5 minutes. The robot might turn on a wind turbine or load items into a bin. Many are built with color sensors to keep the robot on the black track that leads to all of the different missions on the competition table.
These robots are not operated by remote control, but by being pre-programmed. There is one corner of the competition table where team members may touch the robot and make adjustments to it. Once it is outside of that area, the team has to trust that the robot will do what it has been programmed to do. Team points are earned by the robot properly performing the missions in the allotted amount of time.
“Each team gets four chances and the highest score of the four is what is entered as their score for the competition,” said Champoux. “If they have to touch the robot when it is out of the area where that is allowed, points are deducted.”
Messmore Elementary School students Ace Vrvovski and Iriha Shah explain a little bit about what went into the construction of their robot.
“We had some different plans we were looking at, but we decided this one was best because of the size of the wheels and because of the color sensors,” said Vrvovski as he flipped the robot on its side to illustrate.
Teams appear before a panel of judges and explain their innovation project, which is a real-world problem they are attempting to solve, talk about their robot design, and talk about core values and how the members of the team were able to work together to achieve goals. The judges ask questions and give feedback to the teams.
“In addition to learning about computer programming and robotics, I learned how to talk to people as the result of these competitions,” said Vermeulen. “I learned a lot of people skills and leadership skills that have really helped me in college.”
ThunderQuest is in its 21st year and many of the judges are former competitors or parents of former competitors.
Curtis Desaele started as a team coach when his two sons were competing, but after they went on to high school robotics and to college, he continued to volunteer as a judge. His two sons are now also volunteer judges. Much like Vermeulen, Roger Desaele credits Lego robotics with stoking his interest in engineering and helping him find his passion.
“I’ve been putting in a lot of job applications, and my experience in robotics from doing these competitions has really helped,” said Roger Desaele, who is a sophomore at Oakland University studying mechanical engineering. “I applied for 11 jobs at a job fair recently and 10 of the companies are interested in talking to me.
“Most told me that they do not usually talk to sophomores, but the amount of robotics experience I had made the difference.”
Results of the Nov. 12 ThunderQuest FIRST Lego robotics regional competition will be available soon at flstournament.com