An all-girls robotics team from the International School of the Peninsula in Palo Alto will journey to Sydney, Australia in July to compete in the Asia Pacific Youth Robotics Competition.

Its path to success this year also brought the girls to a plastics manufacturer, the Marine Science Institute in Redwood City and the Environmental Protection Agency office in San Francisco.

When the AllGirlRhythm Robotics Team learned that many turtle species are endangered not only because of fishing and poaching, but mainly because of the millions of tons of plastic that end up in the ocean each year, they decided to do something about it.

The team of rising sixth- and seventh-grade students Sofia Cadoret, Alessandra Dodson, Anya Greene, Olivia Hau, Cybille Irissou and Mandi Lee created a turtle toolkit to help schools calculate how much plastic their campuses use each year and devise an action plan.

Turtles die from many things, but plastic is the main thing, Olivia said.

The studentsTurtles Against Nurdles project helped them win the NorCal First Lego League Robotics tournament in January.

Each competition has the students using a robot they built to complete a set of missions in a way that earns them the most points. But tournament judges also evaluate the students on core values as well as a field research project, which is where the turtle project applies.

This years tournament theme, Animal Allies, challenges each team to choose and solve a real-world problem affecting animals.

Alessandra, who goes by Ale, said she learned that plastic doesnt ever really go away.

It just becomes really small and hard to see, Ale said. It just stays in the water and turtles accidentally eat them because they mistake them for jellyfish. It harms their digestive system and takes up space so theyre not hungry anymore and then they starve to death.

Much of the plastic we use are made from nurdles, small plastic pellets that are less than 5 millimeters in size, about the size of a lentil.

Anya said the team brainstormed ways to help turtles and other marine life. She said their ideas included beach cleanups, recycling campaigns and encouraging biodegradable plastics efforts.

After visiting the plastics company and marine center, and doing more research, the students learned that those ideas would likely only have minimal impact: Because of the number and size of nurdles, cleanups are hard to do; only 10 percent of plastics get recycled each year; and biodegradable plastics often harm animals anyway because they still take awhile to break down.

Thats why we focused on preventing plastic use, Ale said. If we remove the trash but trash keeps going into the ocean, it doesnt solve the problem.

So the focus became changing human behavior. The team simplified the EPAs Marine Debris Toolkit, meant for college students, so it can be used in elementary and middle school classrooms.

We decided to focus on changing behavior where its easiest: with kids, Mandi said. Our plastics reduction program can be used by any kids, anywhere.

Starting with their own school, Sofia said the students determined that about 200 single-use water bottles were distributed daily as part of the hot lunch program. They made a pitch to the principal that resulted in the school installing water bottle filling stations and asking students to bring reusable bottles.

Parent Spencer Greene, who serves as one of the coaches, said the girls got good feedback when they met with the EPA earlier this month.

What EPA confirmed for them is that the prevention approach is definitely the area of greatest impact, Greene said. Just reducing the amount of usage compared to recycling, compared to biodegradable bottles, which the girls are working on, provides the greatest opportunity for change.

Parent Tammi Ng, who serves as the teams project and core values coach, said the students accomplishments are amazing.

At the end of the day, while the girls were surprised and happy they won at the regional competition, they were more excited they made such a huge impact putting the toolkit to the test, Ng said. They made a huge impact at the International School and theyre going to get the opportunity to work with the EPA and get it implemented across the nation. This has been an incredible journey for the girls.

These days, the team and their coaches, Ng, Greene and parents Bertrand Irissou and Laura Langone, are busy preparing to compete in Australia starting July 6.

Cybille said the students decided early on to keep things simple and not add too many attachments to their robot, which is named CASOMA, taking an initial from each girls name.

She said the team worked hard, through strategy and trial and error, to pick obstacles they can do within two minutes that maximize the number of points they earn.

Obstacles include using the robot to transport animals built from Lego such as a pig, bee or gecko from one part of the arena to another.

Anya said some of the obstacles the team overcame included figuring out a very bizarre problem where the robot kept tripping over a piece of Velcro and the most efficient way to have the robot move a platform in 180 degrees.

When team members have different ideas about what direction to take, they vote or combine all the ideas, she said.

The competition is a fun and challenging way to teach students to solve problems, manage time efficiently and work together, Coach Irissou said. The team earned 173 points in the first tournament and aim to exceed 300 in their upcoming bout.

There are no two robots that are alike, Irissou said. You can see all the different ways kids come up with to solve the same problems.

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Student robotics team sets sights on saving turtles - The Mercury News