Roboteers show their stuff
Kristin Vega, of the RoboStormz, and coach William West discuss ways to perusade a balky robot to work. The RoboStormz were among three teams demonstrating their robots for the community recently.
MOSES LAKE - It should be simple. The robot is supposed to complete a series of tasks, in this case to pick up the figures that represented the dog, the cat and the person. It's just a matter of programming the robot to do the task unaided. Simple.
Sometimes it's not. "It's really difficult. You have to do it over and over," Jenna Rowland said, who's in the RoboNerdz. The RoboNerdz are one of three Camp Fire teams from Moses Lake in the First Robotics program.
Regional competition is in two weeks, and the RoboNerdz, the RoboSparx and RoboStormz demonstrated what they've been working on, and their competition program, at a "community sharing event" recently.
"It fails a lot of times," Jenna said of the team robot. But that's the point of First Robotics, RoboSparx coach Kat Stebbins said; the kids take the results from each failure and figure out how to solve the problem.
Stebbins is the program leader in Moses Lake, and said it's grown to three teams for kids ages 9 to 14. The leaders are trying to set up another team for kids in middle school, and they're looking for help, Stebbins said.
They especially need a place to set up their construction and test facility, she said. Robot construction for middle school competition is more complicated, and the competition field is 12 feet square, she said.
Jenna said robotics is a lot of fun. "Well, it depends on what your personality is," Colin Beck said, a fellow RoboNerdz. "My personality is inventing stuff," so he went for robotics, he said.
"I'm already kind of a video game person," Jake Zeilenga said. That's what drew him to the robotics program, he said. Jocelyn Beich said she started robotics for fun, but that it might make an interesting career.
Stebbins said the introduction to robotics and science can serve the First Robotics participants well when they start looking at careers. Science and engineering are expanding fields, and the robotics program serves as a good introduction, she said.
Competition is split into three parts, Jocelyn said, starting with the team's solution to a problem laid out by the First Robotics program. They write a skit detailing their solution.
The third phase is demonstrating the robot in action. The robots must perform tasks on a course determined by First Robotics organizers; the kids choose the tasks and lay out their own route.
Getting the robots to do what they need to do can be a challenge, Jacob Mardis said. "You have to be very fine tuned in your programming," he said. The robots can be "very picky," so he makes adjustments in very small increments, he said.
People who want more information about the program, or who want to donate equipment or space, can contact Stebbins, 509-760-4580.