Allan Appel Photo
Marc Garcia with his NXT robot
Marc Garcia needs to make sure that his Lego NXT robot will not only knock the corn out of the machine but also efficiently scoop it up and return to base.
He’s a leader of Jupiter, one of two teams Mauro-Sheridan Science, Technology and Communications Inter-district Magnet School is deploying in a statewide robotics competition on Sunday.
Garcia and members of the second team, M.E. Bots including Mark Martino and Taylor Mewborn, were also at practice Wednesday afternoon.
The two teams of 9- to 14-year-olds both prevailed in the state regional competition of the First Lego League on Nov. 19 in Wolcott.
Mark Martino and Taylor Mewborn of M.E. Bots
The league is the brainchild of Dean Kamen, who invented the Segway. It links up schools with corporations, in this case, Lego, which then design fun competitions to promote science, math, and technology learning.
The kids are all members of the 60-strong Mauro-Sheridan Robotics Club. Sheridan is the only New Haven school in the competition, now in its third year.
The club’s long time teacher and adviser Sue Brown said she has had teams in the state competition before. On Sunday, at Central Connecticut State University Jupiter and M.E. Bots will be going up against 50 other robotics squads from Connecticut.
She has her fingers crossed, because Jupiter did exceedingly well at regionals. Garcia’s team won a Judges’ Award for their design and tactics.
What’s involved is that in the run-up to the competition, kids program a Lego NXT robot that sits on a Lego chassis to do various tasks.
Each year the tasks have a theme. This year is how to address food-borne diseases, like listeria.
“We invented a rind washer,” said young Garcia. By that he meant he and his colleagues researched listeria because of recent outbreaks that affected cantaloupes.
They devised a conveyor belt that had a water washing station, one with ethanol, and then a drying station, because the bacteria live on the rind and can be cleaned from it, he explained.
Making such a presentation, using song or other performance modes is part of the competition. In case of Jupiter, the team used a press conference to convey the scientific info they researched.
But central to the competition was the performance of “missions” with the robot programmed to take certain actions based on the food-based themes. The kids are challenged to program their NXT robot to, for example, harvest fish, but only adult sized, throwing the babies back so they can grow and spawn.
On Wednesday afternoon the kids were at work during a hectic practice of other robotic tasks included knocking down the pink “germs” and hauling them back to the robot’s home base efficiently.
Gabriana Gambino, of the Tomatoettes, said she was having trouble with programming her computer.
You win points by how well you do it, both the programming and the inventive Lego-built pushers and grabbers that you design and build on the vehicle carrying the robot.
Marc Garcia said that at the actual competition blue robots go against red robots in twelve separate rounds each taking about two and a half minutes. The tension can be high, especially if there are glitches.
Brown said the judging depends not only on the robotics acumen and a creative scientific presentation, but the teamwork and colleagueship displayed.
That’s why the younger teams sometimes don’t prevail; when the programs don’t work and jiggering with the computer programs don’t help, they can be publicly hard on each other.
Brown said one of the reasons that the W.E. Bot team didn’t advance is that while all the programs worked perfectly well in practice, at the competition, nothing worked.
You can go back to the computer to re-program or make your fix, but that costs you points too.
Another member of team Jupiter, eighth-grader Zach Parisella, who is also a soccer player, said the competition is intense and real.
Shatha and Assma Khashab and their teacher Sue Brown.
Sisters Shatha and Assma Khashab were on teams that did not prevail at the regionals. Fifth grader Shatha was a member of the Tomatoettes and Assma the W.E. Bots.
Still they were at the practice to cheer their colleagues on.
The state finals take place in New Britain at Central Connecticut State University’s Kaiser Gymnasium Sunday beginning at 9.