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West middle-schoolers join AHS at battle of 'bots
Robots aren't just for high-schoolers anymore.
A team of 10 from West Middle School spent two months building two different robots for the 2008 New England Regional Botball competition, held at the University of Massachusetts Lowell this month. Botball is a nationwide program in which students build computer-controlled robots. In competition, the Lego "bots" travel a specific path on a tabletop course and gain points by completing tasks, including collecting small balls and placing them in a particular location, searching for objects and knocking down obstacles such as plastic drinking cups.
At the competition, the middle-schoolers' two creations, affectionately named Scratchy and Da Robot, were pitted against robots made mostly by high school teams.
A team of Andover High School students also competed in the April 5 tournament, placing first in the Botball Double Elimination round and second overall.
This was the first year WMS has had a botball team, and members agree that is was a learning experience on several levels. Not only did the students have to figure out how to build and program their robots, they had to share and eliminate ideas and work as a team.
"We spent weeks planning, making ideas and getting rid of ideas," said sixth-grader Peter Minigell.
Sixth- and seventh-graders on the WMS team agree they'd like to compete again next year now that they have this spring's experience under their belts.
To start, each team is given a kit of supplies to build two robots, ensuring that all teams have the exact same building materials. From there, the design is controlled only by a size limit and the team's creativity. Botball teams do have to send in documentation of their design.
The botball kit comes with everything "besides brain power," said eighth-grader Alex Davidson.
"I've always been interesting in engineering, so it just seemed interesting to me," said Davidson of why he joined the WMS botball team. "It took a lot of teamwork — building a plan, figuring out when your deadline is, just working as a team. It was a great experience."
Davidson said each of the 10 WMS team members had a specialty — whether writing computer programming or building the robot's body out of Lego toys — and the team pooled members' talents to create Scratchy and Da Robot. They learned to delegate jobs and "how to agree on stuff," he said.
The WMS team met for seven weeks after school in the classroom of seventh-grade science teacher Sheila Harrington, who volunteered as team adviser. The last two weeks, students stayed after school every day until 5 p.m. to finish the robots.
"At first, they spent a lot of time talking about ideas, ideas, ideas. Then they got better about focusing on one idea," Harrington said.
"I learned a lot about programming. It was fun," said seventh-grader Sammy Sheppard, who said she didn't mind being the only girl on the WMS botball team. "I liked the competition. The high school teams had really good robots, and they were interesting to watch."
Teammate Stephen Ayers, an eighth-grader, also said he enjoyed watching the other teams on competition day.
Da Robot, one of the bots built by WMS, had a conveyor belt that would scoop up fuzzy pom-pom balls laid along the course, gaining points in competition. At the top of the conveyor belt, a camera would recognize if the pom-pom was orange or green, and separate the balls into separate bins.
The middle-schoolers programmed the robots in an educational version of Interactive C computer language, allowing them to run without any human interaction. In competition, the robots are required to shut themselves off after two minutes.
At competition, all team advisers and teachers had to stay in a sequestered area, away from the students. Harrington said she was so proud to watch her team from afar, and see that they didn't give up, even though some of the high school teams at the competition had really advanced robots.
The botball program charges a $2,300 entry fee; the WMS team received a grants from the STEM Pipeline Fund, Corbett Fund in Andover and the KISS Institute For Practical Robotics, which runs Botball.
West Middle School's botball wizards
r Eighth-graders Alex Davidson, Stephen Ayers and John Scarborough
r Seventh-graders Mike Davidson, Ryan Tjalsma, Sammy Sheppard and Andrew Meshnick
r Sixth-graders Pete Minigell, Arun Padykula and Armando Belliard
Andover High School's botball wizards
Five Andover High School students also formed a botball team, designing two robots for the New England Regional Botball competition held at UMass Lowell on April 5. The AHS students placed first in the Botball Double Elimination round, and second overall at the competition.
Team members were AHS seniors Ken Schumacher, Peter Lee, Michael Kasparian and Hanyin Cheng, and sophomore Matt Quartararo. The team was completely student-driven and had no teacher-adviser.
The team was sponsored by IBM, AMD and Mentor Graphics.
About Botball
Students have seven weeks to design, build and program a team of mobile, autonomous robots as well as document the engineering process online.
Participants compete against each other on a 4-foot by 8-foot playing field in a fast-paced tournament.
Robots are autonomous and rely on their computer programming to start, stop and maneuver.
Botball events are held in 14 regions across the nation and at three international events in the Middle East.
Source: www.botball.org
- Education
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Seifert column: Character and competence
About 30 years ago, I had a most interesting conversation with a gentleman from France. He was an executive for one of the computer companies in our area. We were very open with each other and could speak our minds. At one point, in our lively discussion of many topics, he shared a comment that has been etched in my mind since that day.
Continued ... -
On campus
On Campus acknowledges successes by Andover residents at colleges and universities. The information is submitted by schools, families and the students themselves.
Continued ... -
On campus
On Campus acknowledges successes by Andover residents at colleges and universities. The information is submitted by schools, families and the students themselves.
Continued ... - Partnership brings new band to NECC
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Seifert column: Character and competence
