Students unveil their robotic creations
BY MICHAEL MALIK • MMALIK@JOURNALANDCOURIER.COM • FEBRUARY 16, 2009
About six weeks ago, three local robotics teams from area high schools received a kit of parts.
The teams -- from West Lafayette, Harrison and Jefferson -- had to turn the parts into a robot that could pick up a ball and shoot it at a target as part of the FIRST Robotics Competition.
The competition is an annual event designed to get kids, in this case high schoolers, interested in engineering, science, math and technology, according to the competition's Web site. Adult professionals volunteer time to help the kids.
At an open house Sunday in the West Lafayette High School varsity gym, the three teams unveiled their robots, which will be judged on various characteristics in a worldwide competition.
Miguel Gonzalez, an 18-year-old senior at Jeff and member of the Jefferson Precision Guessworks team, said the team wanted to keep the robot as simple as possible.
"It's just a set of conveyor belts that are offset that will pick a ball up and take it into our hopper. And from our hopper a conveyor belt will take it up to our shooter," Gonzalez said.
On top of the team's shooter, which is similar in design to a baseball pitching machine, is a camera. The camera, Gonzalez said, calculates how far away a target is so the team can determine how far the robot needs to shoot a ball. The team wrote the computer code so it would work, Gonzalez said.
Teams don't have to just build a robot. One of the other things they have to do is design a Web site, which the teams presented as well.
Gracie Conard, a 16-year-old junior at Harrison and president of the Harrison Boiler Robotics team, said the team's robot uses a roller system to move balls picked off the ground toward its shooter.
"Our shooter is on a turret because we figure if we can't use our traction to aim the camera can locate a target," Conard said.
John Tyler Moore, an 18-year-old senior at West Lafayette and president of the Westside Boiler Invasion team, said the team has worked after school and on weekends to build its robot.
Moore said the robot is different from the others because it "forces (the balls) up a spiral to a shooter that feeds from the bottom."
However, the competition isn't just about winning.
"It's a lot of fun," Moore said. "You take all these different subjects that you learn about in class in theory and you get to come here and apply what you learn."