Category Archives: Robotics

It tromps along without a care, until it bumps into an obstacle. Repeated shoves don't seem to budge this roadblock. Left with no alternative, it squeezes in its midsection. It raises part of its body above the obstacle like someone hiking up the hem of their dress to step over a puddle. Now it can move over the obstacle and continue on its merry way.

This is not an animal but a robot. It's capable of moving, changing its shape, and solving problems, all without the direct input of humans.

It's an unconventional robot to be sure.Unlike what most people may expect them to be heavy, rigid, unwieldy, this robot is thin and light, comprised of actuators on a flap of fabric about the size of the palm of your hand. Some variations have flexible electrical devices and sensors embedded onto the skins, allowing the robots to be preprogrammed to respond to theenvironment. Their inventors, led by Rebecca Kramer-Bottiglio at Yale University, aptly call their brainchild "robotic skins."

These robotic skins are designed to envelope any soft material, ranging from the limbs of a stuffed animal to hollow frames, and imbue movement to their host. When the skins are oriented in different ways, the overall structure can create different motions: A foam cylinder wrapped with robotic skin can either push itself forward like a skier or wriggle like an inchworm. By removing and re-wrapping it around the same object, a user can re-purpose a single robotic skin to achieve a variety of motions for completing different tasks.

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"The robotic skin concept enables robot design on-the-fly," says Kramer-Bottiglio. "[We've] showed that our robotic skins applied to objects [can] create locomotion robots, grasping robots, and wearable robots."

This versatility is especially useful if the task or the working environment is not known beforehand. And nowhere is more unpredictable and unfamiliar than outer space. Space exploration, the initial motivation for designing these robot skins, presents a unique set of challenges: besides having to navigate a terrain that humans themselves may have never set foot on, space may contain hostile environments that conventional robots can't always be pre-programmed for.For example, they may need to move differentlyhop or roll or crawl depending on the terrain. Space robotsalso need to be lightweight to reduce the transport costs to lift them beyond the confines of Earth's gravity.

Thinking outside the chassis

With initial funding from NASA, Kramer-Bottiglio conceived her robotic skins for outer space. But theyare nothing like a clunky WALL-E; instead, they're inspired by the fluid motions and adaptability of animals; flexible yet resilient. Moreover, Kramer-Bottiglio has takenseveral stepsfurther away from the conventional rigid robot design by going 2D, towards the goal of slashing the mass and volume even more drastically

"[Robot skins] can be stored flat during transport and are very lightweight," says Kramer-Bottiglio. "[They] are novel because they [can turn] any soft object into a robot by controlling it from its surface, which had not been done before."

The first generation of robotic skins were capable of movement but not shapeshifting. Soon after, the lab revamped their skin robots to achieve the latter function when the skins are wrapped around mold-able materials. It's hard not to admit that this new morphing version has become even more animal-like. But, like its predecessors, this design hasn't been without a little help and inspiration from another unlikely source.

A helping hand

Dylan Shah, a graduate student in the Kramer-Bottiglio lab, observes a professional sculptor knead clay into various shapes. The sculptor works the clay into a four-legged structure approximately thirty times, with both her hands and then one hand. All the while, her adroit movements are filmed from above and the front.

Shah aims to design a new generation of robotics skins that can generate the same clay-sculpting motions of the sculptor. By wrapping the robotic skins around moldable materials, Shah and his colleagues have conceived ashape-shifting robot the skin is to press on the moldable material like a sculptor's hand would. The sculptor videos are helpful for Shah and colleagues to identify which hand motions are required to generate different shapes, such as thin long structures resembling legs.

"We learned two things," says Shah. "First of all, the temperature of the clay is very important. [Sculptors] actually heat up the clay in order to make it more workable. Secondly, we noticed that the sculptor was doing a combination of pushing like squeezing and shear smearing her fingers across the surface. The smearing is much more useful for making leg-like structures."

Shah has yet to perfectly reproduce the smearing motion in skin-wrapped clay. However, he has devised several complementary motions to achieve the same effect. He and his colleagues are planning to rely on extrusion:the robotic skin can squeeze its host material into long thin appendages, just like pushing toothpaste out of a tube. It's easy to take for granted the complicated motions human hands can make compared to a robot. These complex hand motions come naturally to even a child shaping Play-Doh for the first time. So why do the researchers insist on learning from a professional sculptor?

"We wanted to see what the most skilled humans did, so that we could learn how the most skilled robots might operate," says Shah.

Not always the inside that counts

The robotic skins are like nothing the robotics community has seen, yet their characteristics are still far from those of a living animal. Instead of a free-roaming creature you may be picturing in your mind, the robotic skins and their hosts more closely resemble animals on leash, given that the skins are still tethered by actuator cables. Most of the robotic skins rely on changing the air pressures in pistons or air bladders to bend, so they have to be connected to a compressed air source. Shah's version of morphing skins also uses threads attached to spools which cinch like a belt for actuation. Currently there are no straightforward solutions to replacing the cables.

While still nowhere near practical deployment, Kramer-Bottiglio'srobotic skins have beenwell-receivedfor their conceptual novelty, expanding the design space for robotics. Her robotic skins challenge the common perception of what it means to be "robotic".

After all, what maketh a robot may only need to be skin deep.

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Robotic skins might enable the next generation of space exploration - Salon

Posted: Jan 25, 2020 / 06:39 PM EST / Updated: Jan 25, 2020 / 06:39 PM EST

LIVERPOOL, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) Robotics have been an important part of the Liverpool Central School Districts curriculum for years, and this year, they organized a robotics competition for their middle schoolers!

Anika Keysor is only in 8th grade at Soule Road Middle School, but robotics are helping her get a head start on her future career as an aspiring computer engineer.

Shes only been pursuing robotics since the beginning of the school year.

Its amazing. Its fantastic to be a part of something so new and help it develop, Keysor said.

Since 1998, Liverpool Central School District has been hosting robotics competitions for its high school students.

The first VEX IQ middle school focused competition was held at the Soule Road Middle School, and 18 teams spread across New York State attended.

It gives kids the ability to problem solve using STEM skills, science, technology, engineering and math to be able to problem solve through a game design challenge and try and figure out how theyre going to compete to win the overall competition, said Matt Starke, Technology and Engineering Educator at Liverpool Central School District.

But how does the competition work?

Every team today is going to have 8 matches. Those 8 matches, theyre going to try to score as many points as they possibly can, Starke explained.

From there, scores were averaged together and ranked 1 to 18. Teams then chose an alliance team to partner with as they head into another round of competing. This challenge was similar to a March Madness style, as teams were eliminated one by one.

Not only were there 2 competition fields at the front of the room, there were practice fields for teams to fix any mechanical errors in between competitions.

However, its not just about high scores and championships. The biggest takeaway are the skills students acquire as they head into their future careers.

Maybe I went into engineering and thats awesome, but maybe I just learned how to work together, how to communicate with adults and how to communicate with other studentsall those natural skills that you need to learn, they take away from this as well, said Starke.

Saturday morning, students like Anika realized just how important teamwork is.

Were all balancing each other out and were making it better, so its not as much competition as were all teamwork, said Keysor.

Teams were either trying to win the competition or score well enough to qualify for state championships.

Heres a list of Saturdays winners:

iDesign Solutions, a Central New York based company, sponsored and attended the competition. It gave students a look at the new products and hands-on STEM experiences.

Win or lose, students put all of their skills to the test!

For more local news, follow Adrienne Smith onTwitter @AdrienneSmithTV

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Raising the bar in Robotics: Liverpool Central School District hosts first competition for middle school students - WSYR

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. Rainy Saturday mornings and malfunctioning elevators did not stop Roosevelt Elementary students from making school history in the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier.

The students participated in their first tournament with the newly formed robotics team, Robocats, last weekend. They are the only Vex robotics elementary team in Mason County.

Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach.

This is Starchers first time leading a robotics team. She said she had heard about the program from a friend and was immediately interested.

I have a friend that has people who do this in Kanawha County, Starcher said. We need something like that in Mason County, so I kind of dove into it headfirst. I was, like, this is something Im going to try and so far, its been really great. The kids love it, I love it.

For some students, the team is putting everything they like together into competitive form.

I like science and I like robots, said Ryan Matheny, sixth grader. The robot pieces look a lot like Legos, and I like Legos.

Participants had the opportunity to build their own robot, as well as learn how to code the programming needed for it to run. The Vex competition allows them to put that knowledge to practice.

Students come to compete and there are five different awards-design, excellence, teamwork challenge and driving skills, Starcher said.

They drive in an alliance, Starcher added. So were paired with other schools, and they are scoring as many points as they can in one minute. They also have a chance to drive, just two driver team and score as many points as they can, thats their driving skills. The students have also coded the robot to drive autonomously by itself and they get one minute to see how many points their robot can score by itself just from their coded program.

Despite a rocky lunch where a few students found themselves stuck in an elevator, sixth grader Reghan Cossin did not let it put a damper on her excitement for the day.

I really like engineering and I really like science, so whenever they said they were going to have a robotics team, I was like, Absolutely. I need the paper, I need to fill it out, I turned it in the first day, Cossin said.

Cossin shared her excitement and how it is more than just building a robot

Theres a lot of bumps in the road on the way to a goal. Like the counselor in our school has always said that, Cossin said. But really weve changed our design like seven times. There was a lot of technical difficulties, but we got it and were doing pretty good.

While Roosevelt is an elementary team, the challenge paired them up with various students from fourth through eighth grade.

Everybody has been super nice; the kids have made new friends. Another team brought them bracelets. Starcher said. Theyve been talking strategy, like what their robot can do and what it cant and how they can work together to score the most points.

Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Funding for the program has come from various grants Starcher has applied for, fundraising, and community sponsors.

Starcher is hoping to continue the program next year, as well as expand it.

Kids werent really sure what this was this year, Starcher explained. Theyre seeing it at school, and theyre interested in it.

I did get a grant through the Rick and Tanya Handley Charitable Fund. They have provided me with some smaller robots. Its not Vex, but its Sphero robots and its called a Dash Robot. Those are geared more for younger kids, Starcher explained. So, Im going to work collaboratively with teachers at school in first and second grade. Were going to have them start doing some different activities. So theyll just start the basic foundations of coding and programming.

The team is working on their next fundraiser, but are always appreciative of donations.

Each competition has a fee, but where I have two teams, both teams are charged for competition. Theres a couple that are free that we are going to, Starcher said. Ive filled out some grants and were planning on more fundraisers too just to keep funding in our account that way we have the money there. Sometimes we find out we need more parts than what we have and we have to order them.

To contribute to the Robocats, contact Roosevelt Elementary school.

Pictured are members of the Robocats team and staff, including, back row, from left, Dixie Oliver, Gabriella King, Madison Farley, Reghan Cossin, Abigail Oliver, Sarah Starcher, Ryan Matheny; front row, from left, Shelly Durst, Levi Legg, Rilie Wamsley, Layland Maynor, Mason Barnette, Hadleigh Cossin, Claire Thompson.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Pictured are scenes from the Marshall University Vex IQ Qualifier, where Roosevelt Elementary students made school history by competing as team Robocats. Roosevelts team consists of 14 fourth through sixth graders and is led by Sarah Starcher, special education teacher and now, robotics coach. Both of Roosevelts teams qualified for finals in the competitions and left taking home second and third place overall rankings.

Roosevelt Robocats take on Vex Robotic Challenge

Brittany Hively is a freelance writer for Ohio Valley Publishing and graduate of Marshall University, with a bachelors degree in public relations and journalism. She is currently working towards her MBA, also at Marshall. Reach her at hayes100@marshall.edu.

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The robotics revolution - Daily Sentinel

Too often the world of robotics seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Assistive robotics, on the other hand, are among one of the primary real-world tasks existing technology can seemingly address almost immediately.

The concept for the technology has been around for some time now and has caught on particularly well in places like Japan, where human help simply cant keep up with the needs of an aging population. At TC Sessions: Robotics+AI at U.C. Berkeley on March 3, well be speaking with a pair of founders developing offerings for precisely these needs.

Vivian Chu is the cofounder and CEO of Diligent Robotics. The company has developed the Moxi robot to help assist with chores and other non-patient tasks, in order to allow caregivers more time to interact with patients. Prior to Diligent, Chu worked at both Google[X] and Honda Research Institute.

Mike Dooley is the cofounder and CEO of Labrador Systems. The Los Angeles-based company recently closed a $2 million seed round to develop assistive robots for the home. Dooley has worked at a number of robotics companies including, most recently a stint as the VP of Product and Business Development at iRobot.

Early Bird tickets are now on sale for $275, but you better hurry, prices go up in less than a month by $100. Students can book a super discounted ticket for just $50 right here.

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Diligents Vivian Chu and Labradors Mike Dooley will discuss assistive robotics at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI - TechCrunch

Last Saturday, the gym at Prospect Heights Middle School pulsed with music as hundreds of students in lab jackets, Harry Potter-themed wizard costumes and a variety of unusual hats pitted their robots against those of other teams.

Sponsored by a nonprofit called FIRST Chesapeake, the event was completely different from an old-fashioned science fair. The rules of the robotics tournament allowed participants to continue working on their entries between rounds and confer with their coaches. The result was an energy level equal to that of an exciting basketball game. Perched on the bleachers, a sizable audience of family members watched the kids strut their STEM stuff.

According to Jessica Sarver, coordinator of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) program for Orange County Public Schools, there were 50 teams, mostly from Virginia but with one team from Maryland and another from Pennsylvania, competing in the day-long, qualifying tournament. She explained that the goal was to qualify for the state tournament in Februaryand, by the end of the day, the Orange County High School (OCHS) robotics team made it to the semifinal round and thus earned an appearance in the state event.

With judges hovering and announcers enthusiastically narrating the face-offs between teams, shiny, energetic robots moved cubes from one place to another. The race required the machines to duck under a bar as they zipped back and forth across their competition area. The students operating them by remote control were the drivers, but all the team members took part in programming and building the contraptions. Throughout the day, team members consulted with each other and their coaches as they tweaked their entries.

Qualifying for the state tournament may have been the goal, but having fun and cheerfully learning from their missteps were happy byproducts of the occasion for all of the approximately 500 students involved.

Members of the OCHS Hornets robotics team wore blue and orange antennae attached to their safety goggles, and the wondrously named Mustachio Peanuts of Prospect Heights Middle School sported neon-yellow shirts emblazoned with their school mascot, the yellow jacket. Meanwhile, the Neon Drones of Locust Grove Middle School milled about in their bright orange shirts and caps.

For OCHS seniors Daniel Lauber and Joanie Zummo, the beauty of robotics lies in the collaborative nature of the design and building processand even in the competition itself.

Everyone is going to help you, said Lauber of all the students and teachers who share his enthusiasm for building hard-working, efficient robots.

If not for his involvement in team robotics, he said, I would probably still be playing computer games at home.

A three-year member of the OCHS robotics team, Zummo said she enjoys watching the performance of robots made by other teams as much as those she has helped create.

Being on the team has advanced my knowledge of engineering and programming, she said, and piqued her interest in a career in digital forensics.

Both Zummo and Lauber commended teacher Laurie Jamerson, who leads the OCHS robotics team.

She gives us free rein for our ideas, but shell also let us fail, Zummo said, noting that she and her teammates inevitably learn from their mistakes.

Shes super-encouraging, Lauber added. Shes pushing you to constantly get better.

Leighann Scott Boland, executive director and director of development for FIRST Chesapeake, said the nonprofit uses the robotic competitions as a means of promoting STEM education across Virginia, Maryland and Washington and teaching life skills such as creativity, teamwork, leadership and communication.

She pointed out that participants include children who are homeschooled and some who are on community-based teams, as well as those representing their schools.

Faces in the crowd included Orange County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Cecil Snead. Wearing a tie emblazoned with multiple images of Albert Einsteins face, Snead expressed his satisfaction with the event, which he said provided a safe place for students to think creatively and critically.

Snead, who taught math early in his career, said he considers Einstein a STEM hero and a key innovator of our time.

Looking around the room full of happy, revved-up young coders and robot-builders, he added, Were going to have the next generation of innovators coming from this crowd.

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Robots bring students together in Orange for a day of competition, collaboration - The Daily Progress

Gathered inside a small shed in the midst of a peaceful meadow, my colleagues and I are about to flip the switch to start a seemingly mundane procedure: using a motor to shake a wooden board. But underneath this board, we have a swarm of roughly 10,000 honeybees, clinging to each other in a single magnificent pulsing cone.

As we share one last look of excited concern, the swarm, literally a chunk of living material, starts to move right and left, jiggling like jelly.

Who in their right minds would shake a honeybee swarm? My colleagues and I are studying swarms to deepen our understanding of these essential pollinators, and also to see how we can leverage that understanding in the world of robotics materials.

Many bees create one swarm

The swarms in our study occur as part of the reproductive cycle of European honeybee colonies. When the number of bees exceeds available resources, usually in the spring or summer, a colony divides into two groups. One group, and a queen, fly away in search of a new permanent location while the rest of the bees remain behind.

During that effort, the relocating bees temporarily form a highly adaptable swarm that can hang from tree branches, roofs, fences or cars. While suspended, they have no nest to protect them from the elements. Huddling together allows them to minimize heat loss to the colder outside environment. They also need to adapt in real time to temperature variations, rain and wind all of which could shatter the fragile protection they share as one unit.

The swarm is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an individual bee. A bee could potentially coordinate its activity with neighboring bees right next to it, but it certainly couldnt coordinate directly with any bees at the far edge of the swarm.

So how do they manage to maintain mechanical stability in the face of something like strong wind a test that requires near simultaneous coordination throughout the entire swarm?

My colleagues Jacob Peters, Mary Salcedo, L. Mahadevan and I devised a series of experiments to address that question which brings us back to intentionally shaking the swarm.

Individual actions, whole swarm response

When we shook the swarm along its horizontal axis, the bees adjusted the shape of their swarm and within minutes became a wider, more stable cone. However, when the motion was vertical, the shape remained constant until a critical force was reached that caused the swarm to break apart.

Why did the bees respond to horizontal shaking, but not to vertical shaking? Its all about how the bonds bees create by holding hands get stretched.

It turns out vertical shaking doesnt disrupt these pair bonds as much as horizontal shaking does. Using a computational model, we showed that bonds between bees located closer to where the swarm attaches to the board stretch more than bonds between bees at the far tip of the swarm. Bees could sense these different amounts of stretching, and use them as a directional signal to move upwards and make the swarm spread.

In other words, bees move from locations where bonds stretch less, to locations where they stretch more. This behavioral response improves the collective stability of the swarm as a whole at the expense of increasing the average burden experienced by the individual bee. The result is a kind of mechanical altruism, as the one bee endures strain for the benefit of the swarms greater good.

Engineering lessons, taught by bees

As a broadly trained physicist studying animal behavior, I am fascinated by this kind of evolved solution in nature. Its amazing that honeybees can create multi-functional materials made of their many individual bodies that can shape shift without a global conductor telling them all what to do. No one is in charge, but together they keep the swarm intact.

What if engineers could take those solutions and lessons from nature and apply them to buildings? Instead of a bundle of buzzing bees, could you imagine a bundle of buzzing robots that cling on each other to create adaptive structures in real time? I can envision shelters that deploy rapidly in the face of natural disasters like hurricanes, or construction materials that can sense an earthquakes vibrations and respond in the same way that these swarms react to a branch in wind.

Essentially, these bees create an autonomous material that embedded within itself has multiple abilities. The swarm can sense information from the nearby environment, based on how much the pair bonds are stretching. It can compute, in the sense that it figures out which regions have more bond stretching. And it can actuate, meaning move in the direction toward more stretching.

These properties are some of the longstanding aspirations in the fields of multi-functional materials and robotics materials. The idea is to combine affordable robots that each have a minimal amount of mechanical components and sensors, like the M-blocks. Together they can sense their local environment, interact with neighboring robots and make their own decisions on where to move next. As Hiro, the young roboticist in the Disney movie Big Hero 6 says, The applications to this tech are limitless.

For the moment, this is still science fiction. But the more researchers know about the honeybees natural solutions, the closer we get to making that dream come true.

[ Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter. ]

Orit Peleg, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

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Bees Can Teach Engineers a Thing or Two about Robotics - The National Interest Online

This story was edited at 9:45 a.m., Jan. 24 to address several typos and 11:54 a.m. to remove a quote that subjects affected by the story said was misstated.

KENDALL COUNTY, IL Konnichiwa, hajimemashite. In Japanese, this phrase means 'hello, nice to meet you,' and it's one the members of the 'Pheonix Cubitects' local youth robotics team may want to remember. They have all been invited to participate in an international youth robotics competition, the 2020 FIRST Lego League International Invite in Nagoya, Japan, this May. The invite is spread over three days from May 7 - 10 and involves both competitive and friendly events.

"It's a really great way for the kids to see the diversity, to see the different ways that other children are coming up with solutions in the robotics world," Laurel Coonradt, the mother of one of the older team members, 8th-grader Jensen Coonradt, said.

The team's invitation came as a result of their winning second place at the FIRST Illinois Robotics Lego League Illinois State Championship, and a Global Innovation Award to boot. That competition too place on Saturday, Jan. 18 at Elgin Community College and involved 54 teams from around the state. Their high score in all contest areas qualified them to participate in an international competition of the same type, Coonradt said.

"[They received the invite] yesterday," Coonradt said. "The second place finisher for students was offered an international invite, and Japan was what our team was offered."

Nagoya is one of Japan's primary industrial cities and a global center for robotics innovations, so it's fitting that a global youth robotics event would be held there. Coonradt said 50 countries would send representatives.

"There will be more than 120 teams from a total of 50 countries," she said. "Japan, China, Korea, Australia, Brazil, Spain, Netherlands... there's a two page list."

Some larger countries, like the U.S., were sending more than one team to the competition. The Pheonix Cubitects would be the only team there from Illinois.

Coonradt said these grade-school inventors were eager to represent their communities on the world stage.

But there's a catch.

Even though the team was invited to Japan, FIRST officials made it clear that the team would have to pay their own way to Japan. Coonradt said they'd need at least $6,000 to pay for the airfare, hotels, food sundries involved in with the three-day trip, never mind the actual contest registration fees. The team has a 401c non-profit set up for these kinds of situations, but are also asking team members' friends, families and community members to pitch in. To save costs, Coonradt said some parents could stay home from the trip if necessary.

"Right now, we have three parents who have signed on... and hopefully we'll be able to do more, but if not, one or two parents could feasibly take everybody," Coonradt said.

On previous occasions where members of the team have traveled internationally for robotics events in China and Qatar, Coonradt said they have received financial help from public officials in those team members' communities. She said she hoped more public officials would be willing to help out this time as well.

Coonradt also said that she and other parents are considering setting up a GoFundMe page to help pay for the trip. Until then, anyone wishing to donate to the team's travel fund can contact the team's adult leaders at Phoenixcubitects@gmail.com or by phone at 630-715-3011.

"It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity... when I look at the kids today and how much they've grown through taking robotics, " Coonradt said, "all of this started as an after-school program at [Oswego School] District 308."

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Local Kids Robotics Team Invited To Competition In Japan - Oswego, IL Patch

Five VEX IQ Robotics teams from Boles Middle School, collectively known as The Hive, competed in a tournament on Jan. 11 at Cain Middle School in Rockwall.

Out of those five teams, two qualified to continue onto the VEX IQ Region 2 Middle School state championship, which will be on Feb. 29 at the Ann Richards STEAM Academy in Dallas.

One of the teams going onto the state championship next month, Team 23172C, partnered with a team from Ann Richards Middle School at the Jan. 11 competition, and together they earned the title of Teamwork Challenge Champions. The members of Team 23172C of The Hive are Jonathan Cruthird, Caroline Lewis, Jensen Simmons and Garrett Young-Frey.

The other team to continue to state is Team 23172A, who partnered with a team from Royse City Middle School and got second place in the Teamwork Challenge. Team 23172As members are Jacob Bickerstaff, Loralai Clark, Bianca Diera and Ethan Selden.

Both teams, 23172C and 23172A, also placed in the events skills challenge, with 23172A coming in second place and 23172C making it to fifth place.

As for Boles other VEX IQ teams, Team 23172B joined forces with a team from Pine Tree Junior high School to finish eighth place in the teamwork challenge and was ranked 16th in the skills challenge, while Team 23172E worked with another team from Cain Middle School to end the teamwork challenge in 10th place.

Team 23172B consists of Bryce Calkins, Ryan Malphurs and David Springer, and Team 23172E is made up of Ryder Morrison, Grayson Salisbury and Phoenix Siebenhausen.

This Saturday, all of the Boles Middle School VEX IQ Robotics teams are participating in and hosting their tournament at the Boles campus.

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Boles' 'The Hive' buzzing in robotics competition - Herald-Banner

Poway High Schools community robotics team, Mechanical Advantage Team 16884 earned several awards at two competitions in December.

The team competed at the Tucson, Arizona FIRST Tech Challenge on Dec. 7 and the Central Phoenix Qualifying Tournament on Dec. 21. The win in Tucson has qualified the team to compete in the Arizona State Championship in Flagstaff in February. This is the teams first year competing in the FIRST Tech Challenge.

Mechanical Advantage is a community-based robotics team, supported by Poway High School with members from five different area schools. It is coached by Thomas Bosworth.

The team earned a first-place win with alliance partner The ROBO Warriors 15652 at the Tucson event, as well as earning the Control Award for programming. In Phoenix, the team took home the first-place Design Award and the second-place Connect Award, despite facing and overcoming a major electrical failure, according to a press release.

While the team has worked hard to produce a competitive robot, the members also spend substantial time mentoring other younger FIRST robotics teams and volunteering within their community, according to officials.

The team collaborates with Poway High Schools FIRST Robotics competition team, Team Spyder 1622, on various community outreaches. These include hosting FIRST Lego League tournaments, VEX competitions, participating in local food drives to support food relief efforts for hurricane victims and helping to host the inaugural FIRST Tech Challenge robotics scrimmage in South America, which was held in Asuncion, Paraguay.

For this team, FIRST robotics is more than just robots, said Bosworth. The program gives the team a chance to work with others who share a passion for STEM and improving their community. Mechanical Advantage looks forward to competing in the San Diego league for the remainder of the season and will continue to look for opportunities to help their community both at home and abroad.

The team is captained by Poway High freshman Rohan Bosworth, Poway High sophomore Madalyn Nguyen and Westview High sophomore PJ Wetherell. Other team members include Reily Hopkins (sophomore, Westview High School); Manjusri Gobiraj, Kaila Rosing and Christina Schierbeck (freshmen, Scripps Ranch High School); Rohin Sood (seventh grade, Oak Valley Middle School); and Arya Bosworth (sixth grade, Black Mountain Middle School Academy).

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Poway High community robotics team brings home wins in Arizona - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Imagine being able to program a robot to perform complex tasks by itself, running simply on code.

Thats exactly what a team of students from Anaconda and Butte high schools imagined, leading to their winning performance at the state robotics competition.

Last week, some of Montanas best and brightest students converged on Montana State University grounds to put their brains and robots to the test.

After months of intense planning, programming and construction, Robolution, made up of students from Butte High School and Anaconda High School, walked away with the top trophy.

The For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Organization (FIRST) Tech Challenge is a global robotics competition.

Students in seventh through 12th grade are challenged to design, build, program and operate a robot to compete in head-to-head challenges with competitor's robots doing specific tasks.

The competition is designed to help students realize the value of hard work, innovation and sharing ideas.

Robolutions win last Friday means earned it the sole Montana spot at the global FIRST Tech Challenge in Houston this April.

I have to give all the credit to the kids who put in the hard work. Im just really proud of them, said team coach Carlton Nelson, who was sporting a green Mohawk during Wednesdays robotics practice at Anaconda High, where he teaches science. They've spent many, many hours of researching and looking, designing, rebuilding and testing. And they really got that whole engineering process down.

Nelson established Robolution two years ago. He said last Friday was the teams second appearance at the FIRST Tech Challenge state competition and that he did not expect the team to win.

It was very shocking. Just a surreal experience, Nelson said. We just didnt know what we were doing last year. The students built a robot that could do the task but it wasnt fast enough. It looked like a kit robot rather than something ... they constructed themselves.

Nelson said Robolution finished in 36th place at last years state competition. But with the help of a grant, the team still traveled to Houston to watch the competition.

We went and watched and I think that really inspired the kids," Nelson said.

Each season, the robots are challenged with a different task. This year, the teams had to build robots to play a sophisticated field game. The game is played on a 12-foot square field with approximately one-foot high walls. The challenge includes a 30-second autonomous period, a two-minute driver-controlled period and end game scoring. During the autonomous period, robots operate using only pre-programmed instructions developed by team coders.

Nelson said that last year, other coaches told him, "Don't worry, you're going to grow fast. The first year is your year to figure out what this is all about.

In Montana, teams can advance from a qualifying tournament to the state competition not only by earning points on the robot playing field, but also by competing in judged awards for their robot design, engineering notebooks, programming and outreach efforts off the field programming.

Nelson said Robolution went to the two qualifying tournaments offered in Montana. The first one was held in Butte, and we qualified for state then and got the design award for best design. Then we went to the second qualifier in Helena to practice, and we were actually on the winning alliance at that time and we got the design award there, too, he explained.

When Robolution traveled to the state contest, Nelson said he privately expected it would only win a design award, or a control award.

There are two really, really competitive and good teams. One is the Redneck Robotics from Sun River and the other one called Fusion from Helena. Both teams have gone on to worlds. Fusion, for example, goes to worlds almost every year, Nelson explained. So to be competitive as a second-year team was gonna be a hard challenge.

At the end of the state competition, organizers handed out awards to teams that excelled in design, teamwork, innovation and other accomplishments, as demonstrated in a teams engineering notebook and interview with judges.

I thought for sure we were going to win one of those and go home and be happy because we did good, Nelson said.

When all but the highest award the Inspire Award had been announced, Robolution members started to worry.

I thought we were going to go home without any kind of trophy or any kind of medal. I was really bummed, Nelson said.

He said the team assumed the highest award would either go to Redneck Robotics or Fusion. That team would then get to go on to the world event.

But then the announcer leaned into the microphone and said Robolution had captured the Inspire award.

The team was ecstatic; some members began crying, while others were shocked.

Nelson recalled, It was nuts! The kids were jumping and crying. Oh, it was a pretty neat experience. I've never been part of anything like that. It was really surreal. That whole weekend I would wake up thinking that this cant be real. Did we really do this? The kids told me they thought that, too.

He said even though it was the teams goal to win the Inspire Award and go to the world championship, that dream just seemed so far out of reach.

I just didn't really didn't think we had the potential to win the top team, said Nelson. But I was wrong, and thats why Im wearing this green hair.

Two months ago, Nelson told his team members they should start preparing for a new robotics competition hosted at Montana Tech, which overlapped with the FIRST Tech Challenge World Championship.

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I told them that the schedule conflict shouldn't be a problem because we're not going to go to worlds, Nelson said.

So Robolution members made a bet with their coach.

They said, OK, if we go to worlds, youve got to get a Mohawk and turn it green, Nelson said. I didnt think we would be sitting in this position two months ago.

Nelson said he credits the team members' attitude and willingness to support each other for their success.

I think the biggest thing is that theyre all operating together as a team. They really came together cohesively as a team this year, and they really honed in on their strengths. So we've got kids that are really strong at building, and we've got kids that are really strong at programming, said Nelson. For them to find out their own niches and strengths in the team was just amazing to watch.

On Wednesday evening, Robolutions eight members two from Butte High School and the rest from Anaconda gathered in a classroom in Anaconda to prepare for the world competition.

In one corner of the room, Aaliyah Andersch was making design improvements to the teams remote controls and robot controlling info.

So for the past competitions, Ive just been carrying around the robots in a foam. So having this design will help us look more professional at worlds, said the Butte High School junior. Andersch joined Robolution last year and initially helped with the programming until she realized she was a much better designer.

I think having the skills to imagine things in your head and how they would work are some of the most important things to have as a designer, said Andersch.

Sitting next to Andersch, Kaden Dean stared at his laptop intently with his headphones on. He was concentrating on coding with Android Studio.

Dean is also a Butte High junior and a Robolution veteran. He started learning how to code at a summer program held at Montana Tech through Upward Bound, where hes learned Java, Scratch, Eclipse and Block in Java among other programming.

Dean joined Robolution when he found out that Upward Bound would support and fund a robotics team for Butte and Anaconda students.

I just stuck with it and its something extracurricular, which is better than doing nothing, Dean explained. My favorite part of working in this team is the fact that we can all work through our differences. Well have our arguments but we can still come back together and work things out, still have fun and not be super serious and hardcore all the time. Were just a group of friends who are just doing what we like.

At the other end of the room was the table of builders. Dean said hes dependent on them because he finds it difficult to program without seeing a visual build of the project.

Sitting with the builders was Caleb Thompson, a senior at Anaconda High School, who is the team captain and a programmer.

At state, it was unfortunate that we didnt get to complete all the matches because of a static problem, Thompson explained as he drew a blueprint on a sheet of graphing paper. The wheels can create static electricity when the robot is rolling on the ground, and that could overload the system. Its like an energy shock, and when that happens you cant control the robot.

Across the table from Thompson, William Barrington explained how theyre tinkering with the robots chassis and re-positioning the motors.

Caleb, last year, was coding the robot the night before the competition. So for him to take on the coding a little more in depth this year and with more background was really good for the team because he knows what hes doing, said Barrington, also a senior at Anaconda. For me, between programming or building, it was a no-brainer. Im pretty good at thinking in 3-D so I can look at something and say that thing is going to run into that.

Another builder at the table is Jaiden Connors, a sophomore at Anaconda High. He said his favorite part of being a builder is problem-solving and figuring out how to make things work.

This year, weve had a lot more teamwork and worked better together. And I think we knew more about how everything works, Connors said. He explained that while the teams are judged on their robots performance and completion of tasks, other qualities like sportsmanship, ability to follow rules, and team outreach all get factored into which team becomes the overall winner.

Team outreach is typically done by the scouts. Andrew Werner, a sophomore at Anaconda High and the newest member of Robolution, is one of them.

I help scout, so I go around and see what other teams are capable of and I try to see if we can maybe form an alliance with them later on, explained Werner.

Connors said scouts like Werner play an essential role in the team. A scout has to go talk with other teams and see how they can work well with our team. And if you choose your alliances right, you have a better chance of making it to the finals round, he said.

It brings all of the teams together and forces individual teams to think outside the box, he concluded.

As the team prepares for the world championship in April, some members are having mixed feelings, especially the seniors.

It feels really good to end my high school career like this, but Im also dreading the moment when its done, said Thompson. Like, I was really sad going into state because I thought we wouldnt get to come here any more and work on the robot. But winning state gives us a couple more months.

Barrington, the only other senior on the team, said winning a spot at the world championship means a lot for Anaconda. Its like our first state championship for literally anything in a while I think its our first state championship since three years ago, which was in wrestling, I think.

Next up is fundraising. Robolution will have to come up with funds to pay for their trip to the world contest in Houston.

Were going to have to rely a lot on local businesses and the community, said Thompson.

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Originally posted here:

Butte-Anaconda robotics team beats Montana, takes on the world - Montana Standard