Category Archives: Robotics

EMMITSBURG, Md. - All eyes were on the PNC Mount Saint Mary's Sports Complex as 48 robotics teams and over 500 middle and high school students compete in Maryland's first tech challenge championship.

Students practiced hands on STEMactivities then teamed up to build driving robots. These teams went through 6 qualifying tournaments to make it to this championship.

"These little particles and putting them into center vortexes to earn points and capping balls and moving stuff around on the field while being cooperative so competing and being cooperative with the people they're competing against" , said Zachary Trautwein, a STEM teacher at Southern Garrett high school.

The first tech challenge program is designed to inspire students to become technology and engineering innovators.

"Trying to build robots that's are eighteen by eighteen to compete with a certain challenge since then. And were at the state championship to see who will move on to super regionals to see who will go on to St Louis in April", said Mariah Bolden, a STEM student at Southern Garrett high school.

"This is a great opportunity for the students its shows that we as a society values science and engineering. It gives them a place to showcase their skills, they're going to do stuff here that they probably aren't doing in school in regular science class.", said Jeffrey Simmons, the Dean of Natural Science and Math at Mount Saint Mary's University.

In this program, the students are also strongly encouraged to work as a team to cooperate to foster a culture of gracious professionalism.

The top competitive teams will advance to compete at the final robotics championship held in St. Louis in April of this year.

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Local students go head-to-head in national robotics competition - WHAG

The Van Wert robotics Team won medals over the weekend at the state championship. They will now advance to the North Super-Regional competition. (Photo courtesy of Bob Spath)

The team overcame a couple losses in early rounds, persevering and eventually landing a partnership with the number two team going into the semi-finals. After sweeping the first best of three semi-finals, the team faced the top seeded team and, after losing the first match in the finals, the Van Wert High School robotics team along with the robotics team called TBD from Aurora, Ohio, took the final two matches.

Only five teams from Ohio advance to the next level; winning the state championship advances the Van Wert team to the North Super-Regional competition in Iowa at the end of March where the top teams from 11 states will compete for coveted spots in the World Championship.

Coaches Zane McElroy and Bob Spath are thrilled to have the opportunity to represent Van Wert at the Super-Regional competition.

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Cougar robotics team advance to Super-Regionals - Times Bulletin

ACWORTH Ten Cornerstone Preparatory Academy students worked like a well-oiled machine last semester by building a robot that took home the first trophy for the schools robotics team at a regional competition.

The fifth- and sixth-grade students from the private kindergarten to 12th grade school in Acworth joined forces to become Stormbots Cornerstones first Lego Robotics team this school year.

The team took home its first trophy, celebrating the teams good sportsmanship, at a Georgia Institute of Technology-sponsored competition in December in Roswell, the first the team had participated in.

Students programmed a robot no bigger than a shoe box to perform tasks such as pushing, pulling and grabbing small objects, said team member David Baines, an 11-year-old fifth-grader from Kennesaw.

In addition to programming the robot before the competition, the students created a five-minute skit to perform for the competitions judges.

Theres a lot more to (robotics) said fifth-grader Isaac Sanchez, 10, of Acworth.

Teams had to present a problem and solution for an environmental issue that affects both animals and humans to satisfy the competitions Animal Allies theme.

The Cornerstone teams skit addressed the possible extinction of honey bees, which is predicted to severely impact humans, said David.

After (honey bees are) extinct, (mankind) will have less than four years of life left, he said.

The skit featured fifth-graders Madelyn Beatty and Sarah Sanabia dressed as bees while fifth-grader Keaton McCollum performed in a head-to-toe yellow outfit as pollen. Patrick Garner, an 11-year-old sixth-grader, performed in a beekeeper outfit provided by Kennesaws Hometown Honey.

Cornerstone won the core values award for their teamwork, and their robots performance landed the team a ticket to a super regionals competition.

The team finished its season after competing in the super regionals on Jan. 14.

With the season over, the fifth-graders are buzzing to continue building the team next year and bring home more trophies.

Cornerstone Prep has an enrollment of 480 students and was founded in 2004.

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Cornerstone Prep robotics team brings home trophy in first year - MDJOnline.com

Jerry Lackey, Special to the Standard-Times Published 2:20 p.m. CT Feb. 12, 2017 | Updated 18 hours ago

The Robotics Competition at the San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo.(Photo: contributed)

For the second year, Robotics Competition takes the spotlight Monday at the 85th San Angelo Stock Show and Rodeo in the Auto Wrangler Livestock Pavilion.

The popular sport is open for 4-H and FFA teams, plus public, private and home-school teams.

Registration is from 8:30 to 10 a.m., and the first round starts at 10:10 for juniors in grades 3-5. Intermediates and seniors will follow. Each division will have two rotations.

Monday at the San Angelo Fairgrounds is perhaps at a slower pace, as barns are cleaned and prepared for the next wave of livestock. The Wells Fargo Pavilion Commercial Exhibits, Creative Arts Building and midway food vendors open at 10 a.m. and will close at 8 p.m. The Alon Carnival will be open from 5-11 p.m.

Tuesday is move-in day for Junior Market Barrow in the swine section of the Auto Wrangler Livestock Pavilion. Across midway at the 1st Community Credit Union Spur Arena, Ag Mechanics Show entries will be setting up starting at 9 a.m. Tuesday. Judges will spend Wednesday evaluating and placing an expected number of entries of more than 600.

Theres much more stock show and four more rodeo performances in this final week. The stock show will culminate with the Junior Premium Sale at 2:30 p.m. Saturday and the rodeos last performance will also be Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with the $100,000 Chute-Out.

Meanwhile, during a lull in competition while new entries arrive, this would be a good time to highlight the Ambassador program which plays a very important part in the SASSRA program, not only during rodeo time but year around.

Some of us remember when the primary function of the Ambassadors was to set pivots for the grand entry and post colors for the National Anthem. Since that time the program has grown to 12 members on the drill team.

These days, the ambassadors perform fast-paced drills during rodeo performances in San Angelo, and around the Lone Star State. The group is required to attend numerous, extensive practices year round to ensure the drills go off without a hitch.

Drill team members must be excellent riders and horsewomen. Page Allison, a junior at Wall High School, is captain. Lauren Feller, who attends Irion County High School in Mertzon, is co-captain.

Other ambassadors include: Shayleigh Albert, Miles Junior High; Mikaela Avila, Wall student; Jordayn Berryhill, Bronte High School; Caylee Hardin, Christoval High School; Susannah Mann, Christoval 8th grader; Lana Mitchell, Christoval senior; Logan Price, Lake View High School sophomore; Maricela Rojas, Christoval senior; Daisy Shivers, Grape Creek High School; Abby Walker, Christoval 8th grader; and Hanna Weatherly, Bronte High School senior.

Jerry Lackey(Photo: Standard-Times file photo)

Jerry Lackey is agriculture editor emeritus. Contact him at jlackey@wcc.net .

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Robotics Competition slated for Monday - San Angelo Standard Times

SAN FRANCISCO - Ford Motor (F) is spending $1 billion to take over a robotics startup to acquire more of the expertise needed to reach its ambitious goal of having a fully driverless vehicle on the road by 2021.

The big bet announced Friday comes just a few months after the Pittsburgh startup, Argo AI, was created by two alumni of Carnegie Mellon Universitys robotics program, Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander.

Salesky formerly worked on self-driving cars at a high-profile project within Google- now known as Waymo - and Rander did the same kind of engineering at ride-hailing service Uber before the two men teamed up to launch Argo late last year. Argo had been considering whether to raise money from venture capitalists, the conventional fundraising channel for startups, before opting to become an independent subsidiary of Ford instead.

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Ford is spreading its $1 billion investment over a five-year period.

The alliance between Argo and Ford aims to combine the spunk and dexterity of a technologically savvy startup with the financial muscle and manufacturing know-how of a major automaker.

The unusual deal marks the next step in Fords journey toward building a vehicle without a steering wheel or brake pad by 2021 - a vision that CEO Mark Fields laid out last summer.

The decision to turn to Argo for help is a tacit acknowledgement that Ford wouldnt be able to pull it off on its own.

This is likely a realization that Ford is behind relative to companies like GM, Audi, Volvo, Waymo and Uber, and is trying to catch up, said Raj Rajkumar, a Carnegie Mellon computer engineering professor who leads the schools autonomous vehicle research.

Ford is counting on Salesky and Rander to hire about 200 employees during the next year while working on the core technology of its autonomous vehicle - the virtual driver system.

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That will serve as cars brains, eyes, ears and senses, said Raj Nair, Fords chief technical officer who also leads the companys product development.

Competitors such as NVIDIA have developed artificial intelligence that learns about different situations as its tested on roads, something that is almost essential for an autonomous car to function in heavy traffic on city streets.

In return for its funding, Argo will design its driverless system exclusively for Ford and then have a chance to license the technology to other automakers in the future.

If Argos system turns out to be far ahead of anything else on the market, the subsidiary could eventually be worth substantially more than it is now. Argo employees, who will work from offices in Pittsburgh, Michigan and the Silicon Valley, will be given stock in the subsidiary as part of their compensation packages so they will be enriched if their Argos technology becomes a hot commodity.

Ford isnt the first company to spend huge sums to obtain more experience and skills in robotics. Uber bought autonomous trucking startup Otto for an estimated $680 million last summer primarily to get Ottos engineers on its team working on driverless vehicles. Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski, another former Google engineer, is now overseeing Ubers testing of driverless cars in Pittsburgh and Arizona.

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

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Ford invests $1B in robotics startup in driverless car quest - CBS News

The challenge handed to them months ago was to make a robot that would earn points by shooting balls into two corners of a field and into a middle vestibule.

And now, the robots they have spent nearly six months building will compete at a statewide competition.

Center Groves FIRST Tech Challenge teams Panic in the Build Room 8149 and Cyber Storm 6190 will compete at a state competition later this month.

Fourteen-year-old Kris Huff and mentor Dave Stevenson work to finish up the installation of a new motor on Tuesday, February 7, 2017. The Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 will compete in a state competition later this month. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Thirteen-year-old Jacob Tallman programs a change in the movements of his team's robot on Tuesday, February 7, 2017. The Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 will compete in a state competition later this month. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Members of the Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 watch as their robot shoots a ball toward a target on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Members of the Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 work to replace a faulty motor on their robot Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

L-R Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 members 15-year-olds Ethan Matei and Josh Stevenson work together to replace a faulty motor on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 member 15-year-old Ethan Matei attaches a plug to the end of a motor on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

A cellphone is used to control the robot of Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Members of the Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 practice using their robot on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

A cellphone and video game controllers are used to control the robot of Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

Center Grove FIRST Tech Challenge team Panic in the Build Room 8149 members work together to replace a faulty motor on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 at Center Grove High School. Scott Roberson / Daily Journal

The junior varsity teams are made up of mostly eighth and ninth grade students who can later join the FIRST Red Alert team at Center Grove High School that is mostly sophomore and upper class students. The junior varsity teams earned a berth to state by placing among the top three or four teams at qualifying events across the state, mentor Mark Horne said.

In September, the 28 students, split between the two teams, got their task at the same time as other teams across the world. No blueprints on what the robot should look like or how to build it were shared.

Students had to come up with every aspect of their robot themselves, said Imogen Horne, a freshmen and team captain for Panic in the Build Room.

We figured out what parts of the game we wanted to do, she said.

Then, they got to work.

Students split up into groups and each group came up with a few ideas for one part of the robot. Then, the team came together and decided which ideas were the best and used those as the blueprint of their robot.

We picked the best ideas to build the prototype, she said.

The robots have one cellphone strapped to the top and a second cellphone with a controller allows the students to control their robot.

Now that the state competition is a few weeks away, students may make improvements to their prototype, versus building another robot from scratch, Horne said.

In the past few months, students had to run their robot and decide what worked and what ideas they could come up with to improve their creation, said Annalise Tugan, an eighth-grader at Center Grove Middle School North.

It was a lot of trial and error to put it together and make right, she said.

Their Cyberstorm robot cost $15 to make, with most of the parts coming from recycled parts from past years, said Walker Grove, an eighth-grade student at Center Grove Middle School Central.

Students must make the decisions on how to build their robots to do what they want them to do. Any parts they cant salvage from past projects can be ordered at specialty robotic part websites, students said.

And students must stick to the budget. Each team gets around $5,000 for their season, with money coming from sponsorships and student fundraising. Most of the budget is used up with registration fees for competition, with some competitions costing a few thousand dollars for students to participate in, Horne said.

About 162 students participate in the robotics program district-wide and even students who dont find themselves drawn to engineering or actually building the robot can find a purpose on the robotics team doing other jobs, such as marketing and fundraising, Horne said. The teams work out of the school districts new innovation center, with their own separate area.

There are a lot of different aspects to it, he said.

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Center Grove robotics team headed to state competition - Daily Journal

The Eagletronics Robotics Team at Alice Shaw Elementary has been hard at work preparing to showcase their newest invention an alert to save wolves to the First Lego League.

Every year, the First Lego League determines a theme for the year that students have to design their competition projects around this year it's Animal Allies.

The yearly challenge has three facets: the robotic challenge, in which a team-built robot has to complete an obstacle course designed by the League; core values, which is how the students use teamwork and character traits like solution finding and respect while engaging in the robotic challenge; and a final project.

The Eagletronics team was meeting every Wednesday at lunch and after school on Fridays, as well as collaborating with a robotics team in New Mexico, to complete their project to save the wolves in and around Yellowstone National Park.

Our radio activated guard box has been modified with an infrared sensor for thermal detection of wolves, said Shaws robotics team adviser Valerie Trenev.

Trenev explained why the team decided to devote their project to helping wolves.

Wolves, unfortunately, are targeted as predators in the wild, Trenev said. They go to a ranchers property and eat their sheep or cattle. The wolves are a problem because theyre going in to the areas where the livestock and cattle are. The ranchers lose a lot of money when their livestock gets eaten, so they get really mad and shoot the wolves.

Were noticing a comeback of the wolves, she said. They were nearly exterminated in the early 1900s and now were seeing a huge comeback. Now, where they graze on federal land, were seeing a huge problem.

She explained that the presence of cattle drive away deer, which are typically what the wolves feed on. So, since they cant hunt deer, the wolves go after livestock on federal ranches, where there are typically no fences or boundaries for livestock.

The box is designed to sound alarms and strobe lights when it is activated by body heat as it crosses certain perimeters. Their hope is that by scaring the wolves, or other predators, they will be deterred from hunting livestock which will in turn save the wolves lives.

After competing in a regional competition through the FLL, the Eagletronics team came in the Top 25 out of 376 teams in Southern California. Although they didnt make the final cut, the team said they did a good job about spreading the word to other teams.

The project also won an award at the local competition the team entered.

After news spread about Eagletronics invention, FLL did a shout out blast about the team and their project that went to 25,000 teams around the world, leading a team out of New Mexico that is also working on a project about wolves, to reach out and offer help.

Eagletronics has been Facetiming the New Mexico team for development and technical ideas and support.

While Trenev said shes not sure when the project will actually be completed and showcased, they continue to work on it every chance they get, and experiment with different types of alarms.

Weve tried Metallica and radio talk show, she said, laughing, noting that theyve also recorded students yelling phrases to deter to the wolves.

A fifth-grader at Shaw and first-year robotics team member, Lillian Evans, said she has a lot of background knowledge on the project and that she finds it important to do this for wolves, cattle and ranchers.

Its mostly for the wolves, she said. Id be devastated if wolves died out.

Evans, who said she has been the team spirit throughout the project, works mostly with details related to the project, although she also creates props. Her latest props were wolf ears she made for the team to wear at competitions. She also wears a fur vest and carries a sign that says Save the Wolves.

Were very excited, she said.

Besides finishing their project, the Eagletronics Team will be attending a Spring Showcase in mid-May to compete beside other Southern California student robotics teams in the robotic challenge and core values arenas.

Krista Chandler covers education in Santa Maria for Lee Central Coast News. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @KristasBeat.

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Alice Shaw robotics team building invention to save wolves | Local ... - Lompoc Record

WEISER On Friday, a team of freshmen from Caldwell High School earned the top prize in a regional robotics tournament and a chance to compete in the upcoming state championship.

The tournament, made up of 38 middle school and high school teams, tasked students with designing and building a robot that can compete against other teams in a game-based engineering challenge.

The Caldwell High School senior team won the excellence award for the best overall robot design and student achievement.

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Coach Dennis Zattiero, who teaches pre-engineering at Caldwell High School, said this years victory is in keeping with tradition. He said the school has competed in the world championships three of the last four years.

The thing I find most interesting, is that the teams dont get the pieces to build their robot until the beginning of the school year, Zattiero said.

When they do receive the parts, students often devote up to 200 hours into building the robot, essentially from scratch.

The most unique thing about the competition, Zattiero said, is that students must take the knowledge they have learned in school and apply it to building their robot. The games are what he calls discovery-based learning, which allows students the time they need to work through the issues they face in a real-world setting. The process is difficult, however, and teams are often unable to complete their robot or make it operational.

Once completed, the robot is used to compete in 10 rounds of one-on-one strategy-based tasks. There are three separate tasks teams must complete in the span of two minutes.

The first task teams complete in that time frame is programming their robot to autonomously pick up foam jacks and move them over a fixed wall. The next phase involves putting as many jacks over the wall as possible with an opponent defending the other side with their robot. For the final task, the robot must grab to a certain point on a wooden post and lift itself as high as it can. Many teams dont get to this point due to its difficulty, Zattiero said.

Two minutes doesnt seem like much time, he said. But once the match starts it seems like forever because they have so much to do.

Tournaments are held year-round at the regional, state, and national levels, with local champions going on to compete against the best in the world at VEX World championships in April. The competitions are sponsored by the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation, a Texas-based organization dedicated to inspiring science and technology learning.

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Freshman Caldwell team takes first place in Regional Robotics Tournament - Idaho Press-Tribune

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SAN FRANCISCO Ford Motor is spending $1 billion to take over a budding robotics startup to acquire more expertise needed to reach its ambitious goal of having a fully driverless vehicle on the road by 2021.

The big bet announced Friday comes just a few months after the Pittsburgh startup, Argo AI, was created by two alumni of Carnegie Mellon Universitys robotics program, Bryan Salesky and Peter Rander.

The alliance between Argo and Ford is the latest to combine the spunk and dexterity of a technologically savvy startup with the financial muscle and manufacturing knowhow of a major automaker in the race to develop autonomous vehicles. Last year rival General Motors paid $581 million to buy Cruise Automation, a 40-person software company that is testing vehicles in San Francisco.

The Argo deal marks the next step in Fords journey toward building a vehicle without a steering wheel or brake pedal by 2021 a vision that CEO Mark Fields laid out last summer.

The big-ticket deal for the newly-minted company clearly was aimed at getting Salesky and Rander. Salesky formerly worked on self-driving cars at a high-profile project within Google now known as Waymo and Rander did the same kind of engineering at ride-hailing service Uber before the two men teamed to launch Argo late last year.

When talent like that comes up, you dont ignore that ability, said Raj Nair, who doubles as Fords chief technical officer and product development head.

The two will develop the core technology of Fords autonomous vehicle the virtual driver system, which Nair described as the cars brains, eyes, ears and senses.

The decision to turn to Argo for help is a tacit acknowledgement that Ford needed more talent to deliver on Fields 2021 promise, said one expert familiar with Salesky and Rander.

This is likely a realization that Ford is behind relative to companies like GM, Audi, Volvo, Waymo and Uber, and is trying to catch up, said Raj Rajkumar, a Carnegie Mellon computer engineering professor who leads the schools autonomous vehicle research.

Salesky said Argo expects to have 200 workers by the end of the year. Argo employees will be given stock in the subsidiary as part of their compensation packages so they will be enriched if Argos technology becomes a hot commodity.

The equity should set Argo apart from other companies in recruiting scarce tech workers. Theres a war for talent out there, Fields said.

By joining with Ford, Argo gets strong capital backing and expertise on other components needed to run autonomous cars, as well as product development and manufacturing knowledge, Salesky said. In return for its funding, Argo will design its driverless system exclusively for Ford and then have a chance to license the technology to other automakers in the future.

Competitors such as NVIDIA have developed artificial intelligence that learns about different situations as its tested on roads, something that is almost essential for an autonomous car to function in heavy traffic on city streets.

Ford isnt just racing General Motors and other automakers to gain robotics experience. Uber bought autonomous trucking startup Otto for an estimated $680 million last summer primarily to get Ottos engineers on its team working on driverless vehicles. Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski, another former Google engineer, is now overseeing Ubers testing of driverless cars in Pittsburgh and Arizona.

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Ford Motor bets $1 billion on robotics startup - Toledo Blade

MOSCOW - The atmosphere in Memorial Gym Saturday was pretty congenial, considering the 26 teams had spent months preparing for this robotics competition.

Rather than trying to intimidate opponents, the teens were mostly curious about the other robots in the room and eager to help their potential rivals figure out any last-minute glitches.

"The way this challenge is set up is brilliant," said Stephanie Goeckner, a coach for the Artificial Intelligence team from the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley. "Each team is randomly paired with another team to form an alliance, so they have to look at the other robots as a potential teammate, not as antagonists. It immediately creates a sense of community."

Hosted by the University of Idaho Extension 4-H, the FIRST Tech Challenge tournament drew participants from every corner of Idaho. The opening ceremony featured a few words of welcome from UI President Chuck Staben and a colorful crowd of kids excited to put their programming, engineering and robots to the test.

FIRST - For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology - is an intermediate robotics competition for high-school-aged kids who work alongside mentors, applying real-world math and science concepts to solve the annual challenge. Cooperation is key at the high-energy regional tournaments, which reward the effectiveness of each robot, the power of collaboration and the determination of students, said Robin Baumgartner, coordinator of 4-H science programs at UI.

"Not only is it really awesome that you have kids building amazing robots, these challenges teach them lifelong skills, such as how to be gracious, public speaking, budgeting and time management," Baumgartner said. "These teams also do a lot of community outreach and usually mentor younger Lego league groups."

The Artificial Intelligence team, led by Goeckner and RaeAnn Goodnow, was dressed in red and working on a robot named Hypercube 2.0. The seven members, ranging in age from 12 to 16, spent almost every day together in the two weeks leading up to Saturday's event. Over the past six months, they've been meeting regularly at Goodnow's house in Clarkston to build and program the robot and document the process through notes and photographs.

"These kids are dedicated and determined," Goodnow said. "They have learned to fix problems on the fly. We are just two moms who have kids who wanted to be on a tech team. We are not mechanical or experienced programmers, so the kids kind of have to figure it out themselves."

Her 14-year-old son, Derek Goodnow, was up until 3 a.m. working on the programming.

Each robot had to complete a series of tasks during the games, both autonomously and with "drivers" holding the controls. Using a combination of sensors, including infrared tracking, line following, magnet seeking, ultrasonic and touch, the students programmed their robots to operate both alone and with control modes.

Mallory Hardin, a 15-year-old Clarkston girl, was in charge of driving the robot for the Artificial Intelligence team. Hypercube 2.0 was ready to race around a playing field as family and fans cheered from the stands.

"It's really thrilling, nerve wracking and adrenaline-filled," Hardin said before the competition began.

Paulie Sanchirico, 14, of Lewiston, said the robotics program has been a valuable experience from both educational and social standpoints.

"I feel like I learned a lot about engineering and I get to hang out with my friends," Sanchirico said. "It's a good way to meet other teams and talk about how they designed their robots."

Eileen Rowan, who coaches the Clearwater Atomic Robotic Technician team based in Orofino, brought five kids to the challenge. Dressed in white lab coats and fedoras, the group was thrilled when their robot passed the mandatory inspection, prior to the actual games.

"Other teams have helped us here today and that's why we're able to compete," Rowan said.

Madison Colwell, a 15-year-old Peck resident, said she enjoys the camaraderie as much as the actual competition.

"I do a lot of 4-H projects and most of them are individual projects," Colwell said. "This one is team-based. We all get along and don't get along at times. We are like a family. We argue like siblings."

Baumgartner said the best way to get on a team is to start one. Anyone who is interested in learning more about the 4-H robotics program can contact her at (208) 364-4603.

"This is a challenging, technology-rich, exciting program that inspires kids to get into science, technology and engineering," she said. "They discover the rewarding and engaging process of innovation and how to compete with gracious professionalism."

Sandaine may be contacted at kerris@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2264. Follow her on Twitter @newsfromkerri.

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Robotics event offers lesson in teamwork - Lewiston Morning Tribune (subscription)