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Tackling robots
CEDAR FALLS, Dec 07, 2008 (Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Students gathered around a table at Holmes Junior High School and watched as a robot the size of a paperback book zipped around a miniature terrain.
The wheels let out a short whine as the robot lurched forward a few inches, stopped, made a right turn and continued on its course, pushing Lego bricks into a marked section of the table.
Team members cheered.
The small machine was part of the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology -- FIRST for short -- qualifying competition for students ages 9 to 14.
Twenty teams from middle schools across Northeast Iowa played for a chance to advance to the state competition Jan. 17 at Iowa State University in Ames.
Bruce Newendorp, a FIRST volunteer and a John Deere engineer by day, said the program is designed to instill the team spirit and excitement of sports into science competitions.
Saturday's event included four phases.
Students had to tell judges about how they built and programmed their robots during an interview, give a presentation related to climate and perform a mystery task as a team.
But the largest draw was the Lego robotics competition.
Three months ago, the teams were given the specifications for the course along with a basic Lego NXT kit and a box of spare parts.
From there, students had to design, build and program a robot to tackle tasks in the course.
One called for delivering a polar bear figure to the winter part of the table. Another involved retrieving a ring that represented an ice core sample.
In another area, a Lego house is in danger of rising water.
"You raise the house to keep it from flooding," Newendorp said.
Teams' robots had two and a half minutes to complete as many tasks as possible. There was no remote control, and students weren't allowed to touch the robots until they returned to the "base" part of the table.
Tray Forsyth, 14, of CC Robots of Charles City, said it was challenging.
"Everything has to be exact," he said. "One thing can change your entire game. It takes a lot of testing."
Sometimes a robot would clip an object on the table and be sent off course.
Connor Spading, 13, said the team worked on the robot, which they named Ms. Lynch after the school secretary, for 45 minutes at a time during study hall.
For more information on FIRST, go to the organization's Web site at www.usfirst.org.
Contact Jeff Reinitz at (319) 291-1578
or jeff.reinitz@wcfcourier.com.
To see more of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, or to subscribe to the
newspaper, go to http://www.wcfcourier.com/. Copyright (c) 2008, Waterloo-Cedar
Falls Courier, Iowa Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For
reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or
847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group
Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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