Category Archives: Robotics

The object of the game for the 60 teams of high school students was to pick up stars and cubes and deposit them in their opponents' territory.

And they had to do it with robots they had built themselves.

The students were participating Saturday in the VEX Robotics Competition, a statewide competition held at Dundalk High School and Sollers Point Technical High School. The event aims to expose students to engineering design while teaching them other skills, such as communication, team building and strategic development. Those who got to compete Saturday had won other local competitions.

"It's about engineering design, but it also teaches them many other valuable skills," said Katrina M. Hill, regional support manager for the Mid-Atlantic region of the Robotics, Education & Competition Foundation, which hosted the competition.

The teams spent the day playing rounds of a game called Starstruck. The highest- scoring teams advanced to the next rounds and then to the finals.

Using remote controls, the students drove robots that they designed, built and programmed over several weeks. They maneuvered their robots to pick up the stars and cubes, which they then dropped over a white fence onto their opponents' side. The more objects they got on the other side, the higher their points. Cubes were worth twice as many points as stars.

The game was designed by VEX Robotics Inc. and students used parts built by the company.

There are rules they have to follow when building their robots. For instance, the students can only use a certain number of batteries or sensors. The robots also have to be a certain size.

Chris Putnam, a Hereford Middle School teacher who helped organize Saturday's competition, said that the students end up building several versions of their robots to get them to do what they want.

"They keep building and testing and rebuilding," he said. "If they make it this far, they've worked hard. A lot of kids don't have the patience to keep it up."

The teams wore matching shirts emblazoned with names like Rebel Robotics. One team wore white dress shirts and bow ties.

The crowd was raucous at times as the competition occasionally became intense. One team would throw a star over, just to have their opponent throw one right back.

David Ahmed, a senior at Eastern Technical High School in Essex, said he has been interested in robotics since middle school and wants to one day study computer science. The robotics competition is preparing him for that, he said.

"They force you to think," he said. "They force you to be creative and come up with unconventional ideas."

Anthony Arroyo, a junior at Patapsco High School and Center for the Arts, said he has always liked to build things.

"I feel like this competition brought that to life," he said.

Fifteen teams from Saturday's competition will go on to compete at the VEX Robotics World Championship. Towson High School won the Excellence Award, the day's top prize.

amcdaniels@baltsun.com

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High school students compete in robotics - Baltimore Sun - Baltimore Sun

The Crosby-Ironton High School robotics team was doing better in the competition on Saturday than it did on Friday, team members reported. This year is the team's second year in existence. The students were trying to improve using what they learned during last year's competition and were doing better than they did last year, 10th-grader Walker McKee said.

In this year's challenge, teams needed to build a robot that could pick up and put balls into a "boiler," move gears and pull themselves up a rope.

Michael Serfling, an 11th-grader at Crosby-Ironton, explained that he learns skills while building the robot that he doesn't learn in school.

The team focused on building a robot that could move the gears and kept coming up with new ideas to test out, McKee said. Serfling explained that creating a robot that could climb a rope was difficult, and they burned out a motor while testing their robot. McKee added that it's a lot of trial and error and readjusting different parts of the robot until it works.

The challenge was "very different" this year, but the Iron Mosquitoes robotics team from Northeast Range School in Babbitt didn't have to create an entirely different robot compared to robots they've built in previous years, 12th-grader Chad Wills said.

The Babbitt team did well in its inaugural competition two years ago, but this year was harder because there were more aspects to the challenge, he said.

"The climbing seemed like it would be the hardest thing, but that was our top priority, and we got that working pretty early," he said.

As a relatively new team, the Iron Mosquitoes are trying to learn and improve with each year.

"It's taken three years to do it, but we're getting a hold on it," Wills said.

The Rock Solid Robotics team from Two Harbors High School spent the first week of this year's season getting a grasp on the game because this year's challenge was so different, 10th-grader Kristin Haveri explained. From there, they designed and built the robot, but the different aspects didn't mean they needed to construct a robot that was vastly different from previous years, she said.

The most challenging part of building the robot was getting it to climb the rope, Two Harbors 10th-grader Navah Swoverland said. The competition started out rough for the team, but the robot climbed during the team's last three matches, and the team won its last two matches, Haveri said.

This was Two Harbors' fifth year of competition, but they have a young team this year and the lack of older, experienced students on the team added a level of difficulty, Haveri said.

"The best part was working with a team because we're such a small team, but everyone knows each other. We all are friends and get to work together," she said.

Hibbing High School's robotics team focused on building a robot this year that could move the gears and climb the rope because those two aspects were worth the most points, 11th-grader Maria Valentini said.

"It's just different games (each year). They're all pretty challenging; there are just different aspects," she said.

The most challenging part of the season was sorting through all of the ideas to come up with the design for the best robot, she said.

She's enjoyed the camaraderie of Hibbing's team this year, she said, adding, "There are a lot of really hard challenges, and it was nice to see the things we worked hard on working out for us."

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Robotics teams climb to new heights at regionals in Duluth - Duluth News Tribune

For the second year in a row, the robotics team from the Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy has advanced from the Regional Championship competition at Northern Arizona University, and will represent our region in Tacoma, Washington, at the Western Super Regional competition.

The InFALAbles, a third-year team from FALA, competed against 41 other teams from Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico to secure one of only four spots to advance to the next level of competition. Locally, Coconino High School and Basis also had teams at the competition.

The team designed and built a robot that could successfully accomplish all the missions presented in the Velocity Vortex challenge. They were also recognized with the Connect Award for their success in outreaching to the community at events such as the Flagstaff Festival of Science, and will continue to support STEM activities at events like the upcoming STEM night at the NAU Skydome Monday night.

The students on the team continue to build their skills at manufacturing, programming and computer aided design as they move forward in this competition. Their coach believes that FALA has long had a reputation for outstanding programs in the arts, and this achievement proves that it should not be overlooked for its outstanding STEM programs as well.

Coach Merri Sue Carter said, We are building a real, sustainable STEM program at FALA. We have competitive teams in both our middle school and high school programs. No student should be forced to choose between the arts that they love, or the technology that represents development in the future. They can, and should, pursue their passion for both.

Juniors Cydny Clark and Wyatt Clark were also recognized for their exceptional contributions to the team with a nomination to the FIRST Deans List award. The Regional Championship was hosted by the Coconino High School robotics program, which is multi-award winning program that facilitates robotics at every level in our region.

The FALA robotics program is coached by FALA science teacher Rich Krueger, Naval Observatory astronomer Merri Sue Carter, and Naval Research Laboratory engineer Jim Clark. Sponsors Personnel Systems, Dr. Mclaughlin Orthodontics, LuLaRoe Jeanne Woolverton, and Sams Club have helped the team with expenses. The team is actively seeking more sponsor support to pay for the trip to the next competition. The Takoma event will be held March 10-12 at the Takoma Convention Center.

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FALA robotics team advances to regional competition - Arizona Daily Sun

Chaning Green | Buy at photos.djournal.com Middle and high school students from all over the state congregated in the Tad Smith Coliseum at the University of Mississippi on Saturday morning to compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge. Students have been working for months on their robots that they had to design and build for the event.

By Chaning Green

Oxford Citizen

OXFORD The FIRST Tech Challenged returned to the University of Mississippi campus for the fifth time Saturday morning.

This years competition, hosted at the Tad Pad, featured middle and high school teams from across the state seeking to complete a challenge with the most amount of points and be declared champion.

Each year, teams participating in the FIRST Tech Challenge are required to build a robot that in order to most efficiently complete an assigned task on a small pitch. This years challenge was called Velocity Vortex. The challenge required students to design and build a robot that can fit in an 18-inch box. The robot can expand, but must be able to fit into that box in its smallest form. The pitch is divided diagonally, a red side and a blue side. Teams are stationed on each side of the pitch and given a number of whiffle balls that they must put into elevated goals in order to earn points. Four beacons are clipped onto the sides of the pitch, two on each divided half. The robots must be able to independently press a button on their appropriate beacon. In the center of the pitch under the elevated goal posts are two, 21-inch balls. If competitors are able to lift these balls and set them on top of their goal, they are awarded a whopping 40 points.

Students were on the floor of the Tad Pad in costume, some with crazy-colored hair or shoulder pads made of duct tape and broken CDs, light-up pins and stray microchips, looking like fallen cyborg warriors from the future. They were in tents set up all over the coliseum floor that held banners with their team name in big letters. Teams were huddled together making final adjustments to their robots. Others were in the few pitches set up on the court, making practice runs. Some of their robots had tall, extendable arms and tubes and turny bits that fired whiffle balls at targets with deadly accuracy.

Tupelo Middle School was at the competition, competing under the team name Wavebots. This is the first year for TMS to compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge. Team members spent the last several months preparing for the competition. Students stayed after school multiple days a week, programming, coding and building to get the perfect robot. Last year, the middle school had an after school activity involving robots, so this wasnt the first go round for some of the eighth-graders on the team.

Judy Harden teaches science at the middle school and is the faculty advisor over the Tupelo Wavebots.

She said that shes been so impressed with how dedicated all of the students have been when working toward this competition.

All of this has been totally student-led, Harden said, before the competition Saturday morning. They built the robot entirely themselves. Our engineers didnt come in and help them get started. We got a sponsor, ACCO Brands out of Booneville to help us and theyve been a really huge help to us, financially and otherwise. They even sent two engineers over to check out or robot there at the end. Were hoping next year to go even bigger.

Harden said that this getting ready for this years competition was so much fun that there are already students looking to join the team next year. She expects the Wavebots to be bigger and even better for next years FIRST Tech Challenge.

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Students gather in Oxford for statewide robotics competition - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

Today is Robotics Day (unofficial) on the Front Porch. If you are the sort of person who thinks robots will cause the end of humanity as we know it, shield your eyes and find a different article to read.

The Vex Robotics State Championship was Feb. 24 in Hailey, and of course, Canyon Countys schools had a great showing.

The most applause, however, goes to Caldwell High School, whose Ares Ballistics team finished the tournament as one of two runners-up to the tournament champion, Wood River High School (which was the host school, by the way, but I dont suspect cheating).

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Ares Ballistics also received the Judges Excellence Award, which will send them to the World Championship in Kentucky in April!

Another major event award, the Design Award, went to Ridgevue Highs NOVA team, so it gets the next round of applause. (And if were talking about team names, another of Ridgevues teams,The Gentlemen, gets my vote for classiest.)

East Valley Middle School also competed, and as far as I can tell, it was the only middle school involved! While they didnt win every time, these kids did take home their share of victories and will be so much stronger when they get to be in high school and, you know, can actually compete against their peers. Keep an eye out for this team!

To finish my results report, the Nampa School District team M.I.G. finished in the top 10, as did Caldwell Highs Ares Ballistics and Leos Bosses teams.

Congratulations to all of you, and good luck to the members of the Ares Ballistics team for that World Championship!

Vision Charter finishes FIRST Tech Challenge in 8th

My second robotics tidbit concerns the FIRST Tech Challenge, which was Feb. 11 in Moscow. Vision Charters robotics team, Beauty Bot and The Beasts, competed and finished in eighth place out of 26! They are now headed to the next level of competition.

Beauty Bot & co. was given the 2016-2017 Championship Tournament Finalist Alliance award and the Control Award, which celebrates a team that uses sensors and software to enhance the robots functionality on the field, according to Sammy Samuelson, clerk of the board at Vision Charter School.

In an email to the IPT, Sammy went on to say the Control Award is given to a team that demonstrates innovative thinking in the control system to solve game challenges such as autonomous operation, enhancing mechanical systems with intelligent control, or using sensors to achieve better results on the field.

Members of this team include Paul Riebe, Steven Schofield, Patrick Millar, Esther Schofield, Paige Busmann, Matt Jones, Makenna Doramus, Alex Harrold and JJ Riebe.

They spent five months preparing for this competition, along with 400 hours spent mentoring local children in robotics.

In short, each team member deserves a high-five the next time you see them. And the next couple times after that, for awesomeness and service to the community.

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Front Porch: Caldwell High robotics team qualifies for World Championship - Idaho Press-Tribune

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Teams from across NC converge on Greenville for robotics competition WNCT GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) 30 high school teams from across North Carolina are in Greenville for the weekend to compete in a robotics competition at South Central High School. The weekend event is the first of four district competitions leading up to ...

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Teams from across NC converge on Greenville for robotics competition - WNCT

Adam Robison | Buy at photos.djournal.com Gabe Carter, Race Davis and Ethan Young, members of the Tupelo Middle School Robotics Build Team, look over examples on the computer to gather ideas as they work on their robot Slim Wavey in Judy Hardens class Monday afternoon. The team qualified for the first Robotics State Competition on March 4 at Ole Miss. They will compete against mostly high school teams. If they win, they will go to the national competition.

By Emma Crawford Kent

Daily Journal

TUPELO The Tupelo Middle School robotics team is gearing up for a competition against students from across the state of Mississippi, many of whom are in high school.

The team, the Tupelo Wavebots, will compete at the FIRST Tech Challenge state robotics competition on Saturday in Oxford against 23 other teams.

Judy Harden, robotics teacher and coach, said the team of seventh- and eighth-grade students usually competes against mostly high school robotics teams.

Thats a big deal, Harden said.

This is the first year the team has competed at the state level, and if they do well, they could qualify to compete at the national level, too.

The team began during the 2015-16 school year as an after-school club, but Harden said the students didnt compete much.

Adam Robison | Buy at photos.djournal.com Ethan Young, a member of the Tupelo Middle School Robotics Build Team, measures from the wheel to make sure they are working within the required 18 inch cube space for the competition on their robot Slim Wavey.

Now, TMS offers the class as an elective, and the team is made up of students in the class. They work on their projects during class and after school on some days.

The class is split up into teams that each focus on a different competition element art, programming, marketing, recording data and building.

At competitions, all of these moving parts come together. The teams robot battles against other robots, performing certain tasks given to the students ahead of time so they can program the robots to do them.

The students must also make a presentation of the work theyve done prior to the competition, including recorded data, how they programmed the robot and other details.

Daven Sanders, a seventh-grader, helps program the robot, developing skills he says will help him out in the future.

It helps me for what I want to be when I grow up, which is an engineer or an architect building things and making things move and designing things which is basically what I do in this class, Sanders said.

The presentation also includes a marketing component in which students must pitch their robot as a product.

They get to use these skills in real-life situations, Harden said.

In Hardens classroom on Monday, Race Davis busied himself trying to make improvements to the teams robot.

Davis said he is confident, but not overconfident, about the teams chances in this weekends competition.

I know that were not going to do terribly, Davis said, with a laugh.

Although the team could qualify for the national competition this weekend, Davis said hes trying not to think too far ahead.

Were just trying to get past state at this point, Davis said.

emma.crawford@journalinc.com

Twitter: @emcrawfordkent

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TMS robotics team headed to state - Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Toys always grab the attention of the children. When the students of the College of Engineering Trivandrum went to Christ Nagar International School to introduce them to the world of technology, they carried with them some cool toys. These toys are no ordinary ones. RoboCet, the robotics club of CET made robotic arms that mimic hand gesture, snakebot that moves like a reptile, a smart phone controlled car etc. The response they got from the kids was amazing.

Define box before telling us to think out of the box? said Adhitya, a seventh standard student. The googly was aimed at team Drishti. The presenters faced a volley of questions about robots and their functioning. Scientific findings are the result of imagination and experimentation. Presenter Abhishek P James told them to focus on imagination and not to worry about the theory behind it. Among the students, the team found a meticulous mind in Hari Govind who solved a puzzle, one of connecting nine dots, in his 12th attempt.

When the students of class seven and eight assembled in the classroom on the second floor of the school, they thought it would be another lecture session with slides. All sat in the class with a bored look.

It took ice breaking sessions using puzzles to get enthusiastic responses from students. At this juncture, the presenters introduced robots and the entire class came forward crowding around it. Some of them quenched their curiosity by getting their hands on it. Finally when the session got over the students gave a 11 on a scale of 10 to the Drishti team.

The team will meet selected students during the summer vacations. Selection will be based on their eagerness to learn technology. The idea is to technically adopt a high school in Thiruvananthapuram for one year and conduct sessions on basic technology. A Drishti club will be formed in the school, said Shilendra.

The year-long project will have monthly classes for students of classes 8 and 9. At the end of the year the kids will be encouraged to come up with their own project. These projects will then be included in the school expo for the next years Drishti.

#drishti_to_school

It is a campaign initiated by students of CET to inspire school kids to create innovations using technology. The campaign has been organised as part of their annual tech fest Drishti.

The objective of this campaign is to introduce technology and its potential to school students. It also aims to identify the creative spark hidden inside each child.

Sushmitha S Das, Shilendra Soman and Abhishek P James, final year students of the college from electronics and mechanical engineering departments are the minds behind the initiative. They were assisted by the members of RoboCet- Don Dominic, Sebin, Ashike Thomas and Balu Sadanandan. The event was photo documented by Rohit Punnen.

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Toying with robotics - The New Indian Express

17 Photos

A Toshiba engineer watches a small robot with two CCD cameras during its press preview at a Toshiba factory in Yokohama on June 30, 2015. The robot was developed to investigate the interior of the primary containment vessel of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 2.

TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images

TOKYO The head of decommissioning for the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant said Thursday that more creativity is needed in developing robots to locate and assess the condition of melted fuel rods.

A robot sent inside the Unit 2 containment vessel last month could not reach as close to the core area as was hoped for because it was blocked by deposits, believed to be a mixture of melted fuel and broken pieces of structures inside. Naohiro Masuda, president of Fukushima Dai-ichi Decommissioning, said he wants another probe sent in before deciding on methods to remove the reactors debris.

Unit 2 is one of the Fukushima reactors that melted down following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

The plants operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., needs to know the melted fuels exact location as well as structural damage in each of the three wrecked reactors to figure out the best and safest ways to remove the fuel. Probes must rely on remote-controlled robots because radiation levels are too high for humans to survive.

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For the first time, radiation from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan has been found in the United States. CBSN's Cindy Hsu has the sto...

Despite the incomplete probe missions, officials have said they want to stick to their schedule to determine the removal methods this summer and start work in 2021.

Earlier probes have suggested worse-than-anticipated challenges for the plants cleanup, which is expected to take decades. During the Unit 2 probe in early February, the scorpion robot crawler stalled after its total radiation exposure reached its limit in two hours, one-fifth of what was anticipated.

We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out, Masuda told reporters.

Probes are also being planned for the other two reactors. A tiny waterproof robot will be sent into Unit 1 in coming weeks, while experts are still trying to figure out a way to access the badly damaged Unit 3.

TEPCO is struggling with the plants decommissioning. The 2011 meltdown forced tens of thousands of nearby residents to evacuate their homes, and many have still not been able to return home due to high radiation levels.

Cleanup of communities outside of the plant is also a challenge. The cost has reportedly almost doubled to 4 trillion yen ($35 billion) from an earlier estimate. On Thursday, police arrested an Environment Ministry employee for allegedly taking bribes from a local construction firm president, media reports said.

2017 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Fukushima cleanup chief says better robotics could help - CBS News

Photo: Stephanie Kim / Hearst Connecticut Media

Rohit Singhal and Nikia Muraskin of Wilton Library's robotics team, Singularity Technology, inspecting the teams robot.

Rohit Singhal and Nikia Muraskin of Wilton Library's robotics team, Singularity Technology, inspecting the teams robot.

The robot built by members of Singularity Technology, Wilton Library's robotics team.

The robot built by members of Singularity Technology, Wilton Library's robotics team.

The robot built by members of Singularity Technology, Wilton Library's robotics team.

The robot built by members of Singularity Technology, Wilton Library's robotics team.

Controllers for the robot built by members of Singularity Technology, Wilton Library's robotics team.

Controllers for the robot built by members of Singularity Technology, Wilton Library's robotics team.

As the software captain of Singularity Technology, Albert Wei (right) works on new coding for the teams robot.

As the software captain of Singularity Technology, Albert Wei (right) works on new coding for the teams robot.

Wilton Librarys robotics team heads to regional tournament for first time

WILTON For the first time, Wilton Librarys robotics team, Singularity Technology, will compete among 72 of the best FIRST Tech Challenge robotics teams in the eastern region, after winning second place at the state competition.

FIRST Tech Challenge teams consist of 10 or more members, grades 7-12, who are challenged to design, build, program and operate robots to complete various tasks.

Aside from the robot kit thats provided, students practically build and program the robot from scratch using online design programs and the 3-D printer in the librarys Innovation Station, said team captain Nickia Muraskin, a senior at Wilton High School.

We are very proud of the fact that were actually able to manufacture the parts ourselves with the 3-D printer, she said. Thats a really big part of what makes our team a success.

Muraskin leads the team of 10 high school and middle school students with six high-schoolers on the main team and four middle-schoolers on the prototype team.

Since their first year as a rookie team in 2013, Muraskin said the team has become a much stronger competitor.

We were looking back on some old pictures and our robot from that year looks like absolutely nothing compared to this years, she said. Its a much more cohesive team than in years past.

With two weeks left before the super-regional tournament, members of the team have been meeting at the library after school for several hours a day, at least twice a week. Albert Wei, the teams software captain, said the team is focusing on fine-tuning the robots capabilities lifting a cap ball the size of a large medicine ball into the goal post and pressing infrared beacons in both autonomous and driver, or teleop, modes as well as adding a ball launching mechanism, which they hope will increase their chances of placing.

Were all really excited, especially in the software, because were able to show all of the new things were trying out, said Wei, a senior at Wilton High School.

Emilie McCann, the teams build captain, also attributes part of the teams success to improved organization, community outreach and cooperation with other competitors, which are all factors that judges consider when scoring teams.

So its a lot more than just building a robot, because we have to deal with the programming and the fundraising. Then, keeping documentation of everything, said McCann, a junior at Wilton High School. I feel like if we work hard, we could actually have a chance at super-regionals.

Other team members include Cathy Campbell, Alex Cameron, Navod Jayawardhane, Harris Patnaik, Khloe Rackley, Rishabh Raniwala, and Rohit Singhal. The team works with volunteer mentors Paul Lauricella and Tom Abend, as well as library staffers Susan Lauricella and Thomas Kozak.

The Lauricellas worked with Kozak in forming the team in 2013, around the same time of planning the Innovation Station. Kozak said the best part of helping the team is watching them grow in their technical and leadership skills.

This is a really proud year because we started off kind of assuming that we were going to have a little bit better than a performance last year, he said. And then we just started winning the awards.

The team will compete at the super-regional tournament from March 17-19 at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania for a chance to compete in one of two world championships.

SKim@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1044; @stephaniehnkim

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Wilton Library's robotics team heads to regional tournament for first time - Thehour.com