[July 01, 2011] High school students demonstrate robotic skills during Toyota competition Tweet BUFFALO, Jun 30, 2011 (Charleston Daily Mail - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- High school students from Winfield and Morgantown gathered at the Toyota plant here to share their robot know-how and see how Toyota uses robots in its engine and transmission plants. The students are participants in FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a competitive program founded by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway Personal Transporter. Winfield High student Taylor Shank -- whose father, Mike, is a production team member at Toyota -- went to an engineering camp at West Virginia University last summer and saw some of the work done by Morgantown High's MARS (Mountaineer Area Robotics) team. Denise Johnson, a math and engineering teacher at Winfield High, said, "I was Taylor's engineering teacher. When he went on that summer seminar and came back with the idea of starting a team he came to me and said, 'Do you think we can do that?' "Starting a team is a huge undertaking," Johnson said. "We started writing to get money." The Winfield students lined up sponsorships from Toyota, J.C. Penney Co., Bert Wolfe Ford, Nitro Electric, Putnam County Schools, Charles Haught of Edward Jones, Terradon, Advanced Industrial Products of Ona, Husson's Pizza, American Electric Power and Home Depot of Hurricane. The Winfield team, named RoboGENS, entered the league for 9th to 12th graders and, like all other teams, had just six weeks to build a robot. Each year the competitive game for robots varies. This year's game had two main parts: pick up plastic hoops and place them on metal pegs, and deliver a mini-robot to a metal pole that the mini-robot must then climb. Eric Estep, whose job was to drive the RoboGENS robot, said the project got off to a rocky start. After building a chassis and installing a battery-powered motor and some electronics, "We ran it, pressed the stop button and it didn't work again for two weeks." RoboGENS built a defensive robot that was not designed to pick up plastic hoops and place them on metal pegs. But it sure can deliver a mini-robot to a metal pole. And the mini-robot climbs like a super hero, as the team demonstrated time and again on Wednesday. Josh Phillips, a member of Toyota's maintenance team one of RoboGENS' mentors, said it takes just 1.17 seconds for the mini-robot to climb the pole. It was easy to see why RoboGENS won a regional competition in Pittsburgh, the Inspirational Award in Pittsburgh, and got to compete in the world competition at St. Louis in April. The MARS team focused this year on community outreach. Team members told about the website they created and showed a video they made. MARS won the Chairman's Award. Following the demonstrations and discussion, Toyota provided a box lunch and hosted plant tours. The students saw lots of working robots, ranging from carts that deliver engine parts to robots that look at parts and decide how each part should be picked up. Four Toyota employees mentored the students: Phillips, Jacob Plasters, Dale Henry and Barry Brookshire. There were three school mentors: Johnson, Tina Kirk and James Files. The students named Plasters, a Toyota engineering specialist, "Mentor of the Year." Members of the RoboGENS team, in addition to Shank and Estep, are: Michael Kirk, Jessica Kirk, Dennis Chertkovsky, Kaleigh Shank, Michael Terry and Blake Frame. Johnson, the math and engineering teacher, said the program would not have been possible at Winfield High without the help of the MARS team and Toyota. "Today we have eight or 10 team members," she said. "When you're successful it makes a huge difference. The kids are the best ambassadors. This program is just starting to blossom. We had over 30 applications for this year's program." Earl Scime, chairman of the Physics Department at West Virginia University, is the MARS team's inspiration. Team members are: Greg Lusk; Scott Hamrick, Todd Hamrick, Caroline Hamrick; Cortney Mercer, Oliver Weigand, Catherine Nolan, Nick Ohi, Janie Ohi, Matt Gramlich, Emily Curtin, Herb Baker, Haley Tucker, Steve Raque, Emily Raque, Maggie Raque, and Diane Raque. Also, Catherine Chervenak, Evan Lynn, Kari DeMicco, Alex Stout, Irina Crihalmeanu, Rachel Montgomery, Eric Tennant, Ben Semmens and Beth Semmens. Contact writer George Hohmann at [email protected] or 304-348-4836. To see more of the Charleston Daily Mail, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dailymail.com/. Copyright (c) 2011, Charleston Daily Mail, W.Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]