The Great Salt Bay Community School robotics team might not be as well known as the school’s sports teams. It competes rarely, with relatively little fanfare. The team boasts enthusiastic members, however, and educators say robotics provides an exciting medium to teach students important skills.
The GSB team practices twice a week under the guidance of first-year coach Mark Liimakka. On Sept. 29, a special guest, Maine Robotics Director Tom Bickford, ran a workshop for the team.
Robotics students “are highly motivated to be here, more so than probably any program,” Bickford said.
Bickford started Maine Robotics as an educational outreach program during his tenure as the director of The Agent Institute at the University of Maine at Orono, his alma mater.
After the university cut funding for the institute, Bickford, a former biomedical engineer, chose to continue Maine Robotics as a nonprofit.
Today, the Orono-based organization works with over 1200 children and adults each year. It partners with universities and non-profit organizations and runs popular summer camps across the state.
Bickford also operates the FIRST Lego League in Maine. FIRST stands for “For the Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.” The international organization, the brainchild of Segway inventor Dean Kamen, hosts about 150 annual competitions, including a challenge at the Augusta Civic Center on Dec. 10, currently the focus of the GSB team.
The organization boasts impressive numbers, with over 11,000 teams in North America and 20,000 worldwide. The competitions are open to students in grades 3 through 8.
In 2000, two years into the league’s existence, Maine became just the seventh place to hold a competition. Today, over 150 competitions take place worldwide, culminating in the World Festival in St. Louis, Mo. The 2011 festival drew 30,000 people.
This year, 66 teams will compete in Augusta. The teams include not just public schools, but 4-H, church, home-schooled and neighborhood teams. According to the Maine Robotics website, “anyone with the equipment and the desire can form a team.”
“We’ve had teams show up with cheerleading squads,” Bickford said.
At the Sept. 29 workshop, Bickford and Liimakka started with a Lego vocabulary lesson.
The thinnest Legos are plates; a stack of three plates makes a brick. The cylindrical protrusions from the standard Lego are knobs. The company also makes technic bricks, which contain holes instead of knobs. The number of holes or knobs determines the designation of the Lego, and the pieces – such as the 11.5 double-bent technic lift-arm – sound unexpectedly technical for something many people consider a toy for young children.
The principles of Lego construction, however, remain simple. “Strength comes with the number of knobs or the number of holes that are connected,” Bickford explained.
The active part of the robot, the piece necessary for locomotion and programming, is called the NXT. It’s about the size of, and similar in appearance to, a Game Boy, with a small screen, a few buttons and plug-ins that look like ordinary phone jacks.
The students must build and program a robot to perform various tasks. The tasks vary each year and follow a theme. Past themes include Ocean Odyssey and Climate Connection. The theme of the 2011 competition is Food Factor.
The competition takes place on an elevated, 4-foot-by-8-foot “playing field” similar to a miniature obstacle course. The team earns points if its robot successfully accomplishes a series of objectives.
Bickford set up the playing field Sept. 29 and explained the rules to the students. The robot will attempt to catch fish, while leaving young fish in order to sustain the population, harvest corn and tow a refrigerated truck, among other things. The necessary actions will impact the design, construction and programming of the robot.
The robot will need a basket attachment, for example, to catch and transport small objects. If it becomes trapped or otherwise unable to move, requiring the students to touch it, the judges dock the team six points.
Bickford gave the GSB students plenty of advice. “Don’t wait until the day before” the competition to complete a robot and agree on a strategy, he said. “Figure out where you want to be each week and try to get there.” He encouraged the students to watch videos of other teams on YouTube for inspiration.
The program yields results. GSB Enrichment Specialist Alison Macmillan said at least two alumni have studied robotics in college.
Liimakka joined a pre-competition robotics team in high school. Today, the Bath/Brunswick area resident is a mechanical engineer and a former employee of Maine Robotics.
“Robotics is a multi-disciplinary field and it’s exciting,” Bickford said. “Just doing computer programming and trying to excite kids is hard,” he said, but it’s “easy to get kids excited about this.”
“They can’t get these robots to do anything until they program them,” Bickford said.
In addition to creating their robot, students must complete and submit a research project related to the year’s topic.
The limited research available on the impact of competitive robotics, including a 2005 study by Brandeis University, shows students who compete are significantly more likely to attend college and twice as likely to major in science or engineering, highly sought-after skills in fields where U.S. students typically lag behind their international counterparts.
Early in the workshop, the students split up, working alone or in pairs to construct functional robots.
Patrick McGowan, a seventh-grader and second-year member, set to work on a “homemade, four-wheel drive NXT.”
The homemade designation means McGowan improvises, without instructions or other outside input. “If this works, it will be awesome,” McGowan said.
“I’ve always loved Legos,” McGowan said. “I just like taking it up a notch.”
McGowan’s greatest accomplishment in robotics so far, he said, is a robot, built at home, that shoots colored balls, collects, sorts by color, and returns the balls.
Paige Gray, a sixth-grader and third-year member, thinks she’s the longest-tenured member of the team. “I like these kind of things – robots and motors and such,” she said.
Gray is optimistic about this year’s team, although it’s missing a crucial demographic, she complained – girls.
To resolve the issue, Gray recruited a friend, Sarah Simmons, to join her this year.
Chase Harris and Gus Hunt are fifth-graders and second-year members. Last year, the school allowed fourth-graders to participate, they explained.
Harris said he’s looking forward to the competition. “Robotics is awesome,” he said. “I’ll be on the team as long as I can.”
