Emergency Responders
CJH students compete in a robotics challenge.
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Launch the media gallery 1 player - media #3The day began early, 6:30 a.m., for the Clarendon Junior High Robotics teams on Saturday, January 21. When they arrived at the Education Service Center in Amarillo, they came face to face with the reality of competition.
“Look how many teams they brought.”
“They look like they have a lot of experience.”
“Look at the size of their robot!”
And when their turn came, anticipation was high.
The robot was placed on the mat precisely, the button was pushed, wheels turned and the robot started to clear debris and move emergency personnel into their proper place.
Breaths were held as each task began.
Breaths were released as either sighs of relief or groans of failure.
Students representing large and small schools from all over the panhandle were there for one thing, the 2016-2017 TCEA Mindstorms Robotics Challenge.
For the second year, Clarendon Junior High sponsor Lisa Grahn took twelve students forming three teams to compete in this year’s Intermediate Arena Competition against twenty other teams using Lego® Mindstorms® EV3 robots.
“It is an opportunity for our students to interact with other students from other schools. It also offers them the opportunity to do some beginning programming,” said Mrs. Grahn.
The competition each year is set up as a mock demonstration of a real-life situation. This year students were demonstrating to city officials ways that a low-cost robotics platform could remove debris, assist first responders, and cordon off trouble spots within a mall during an emergency.
The competition field was a pre-printed mat inside a simple wooden frame. Pieces representing debris and first responders were placed on the mat by the competition judges. The teams then positioned their robot according to its programmed starting place and pushed the button. The robot had two minutes to perform each of the six assigned tasks. Those tasks included moving medical personnel to the Medical Triage Area portion of the field, moving firefighters to the Responder Staging Area, moving police officers to the Debris Field, removing the debris, setting up a communications tower, and creating perimeter containment around the debris field. Points were awarded for each completed task.
“We just built the robots,” eight grader Nathan M said. “Mrs. Grahn showed us a video and then we found an instruction manual we read.”
Nathan was a member of the Tank Team along with seventh graders Callin C and Josiah H, and sixth grader Taylor H.
But building robots took a lot of work. To prepare for the contest each CJH team practiced doing various tasks every Friday for two months.
“We watched the video and thought of ways we could solve that problem,” sixth grader and Dream Team member Jace C remarked. “We wrote them down and started thinking of a build for it. We were measuring before we ever started building the robots.”
Along with Jace, the Dream Team members were eighth grader Kailee O, seventh grader Graci K, and sixth grader Cate W.
At the competition, problems arose and solutions had to be quickly implemented. Sometimes the solutions worked.
“At first we were going to get rid of our communications tower, which was a source for extra points, because we weren’t sure if it would go against a rule or not,” Laney G, sixth grade member of the Bronc Bots explained. “But we had our builder add on to the communications tower. We were glad because it would have been a little short.”
Sometimes they did not.
“The last round we just scraped all our programs and just tried to get the communications tower to touch two walls, which was worth 50 points. But that didn’t work,” Nathan M remarked.
Laney’s team members on the Bronc Bots were eighth grader Sophia B and sixth graders Britton C and Makenna S.
Although the Clarendon students did not do very well, all of them walked away from the competition with new knowledge and a resounding desire to return next year. They identified time management and being prepared as the areas they needed to improve.
“Preparation is everything,” Jace C said. “You have to have your robot built and programmed by the time you get the competition, because there’s not enough time to just do it there. We need more time to build the robots [at school] and we need to get more done in the time we do have.”
The question that is always asked though, is what did the students take away from the experience. Laney G voiced the answer.
“I think my favorite thing was to see the other teams and their robots and to see how we would actually do if we were to program a real-life situation. I’m kind of glad it was a mock situation because otherwise our medical person, our fireman, and our policeman would not have made it to their assigned spots.”
