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Robots invade Long Beach Convention CenterLONG BEACH, Mar 27, 2010 (Press-Telegram - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- If you don't pay close attention you'd swear you were at a sporting event. It's a sea of mascots, funny hats, school colors and pom-pom waving cheerleaders from each school's cheer, all trying to outdo the others. And for the opposing teams the 10th Annual FIRST Robotics Competition Friday at the Long Beach Convention Center is a sporting event, a battle of the robotic minds. "What the competition entails is each year you're given a challenge and then you're given a kit of parts which you use in whatever way you want," said John Santos, a math engineering and science advisor, technology and graphic communication teacher who runs the after-school Robotics Program at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles. "You have six weeks to build a robot. Then robot goes away and when your competition day comes, you have one day prior to competition to finish any minor adjustments and you have two days to compete." The participants' journey begans in early January when they are given the year's challenge -- to build a robot that could play soccer. "Since World Cup is this year the theme is soccer," Santos said. For the six weeks students worked with mentor engineers, teachers and other teams to design and build their robots. "All the students go through a training week in which we teach them principles of engineering, important safety and we make sure they learn the design process," said Shivam Desai, a 12th-grader and four-year member of the Robotics Team at the Long Beach Unified School District's California Academy of Math and Science (CAMS) in Carson. "Now our design process follows a waterfall model which goes through requirements. In the requirement stage we basically open up a manual to see what does the robot needs to do. What are the size constraints? How is the game played? What do we want our robot to do? Then we design based on that." Teams make sketches, build replicas, do tests and build the actual robot, making sure that every part is correct, that they know where the holes go for everything and that it's easy to fit your hands on, Desai said. "We make sure everything is aesthetically pleasing and ergonomically sound," he said. During the competition students operated their robots by remote control in a specially designed soccer field, three against three, to see which team could score the most points. Even though each team was there to win, the comraderie and teamwork were more important, Santos said. "It's a lot more than just that time spent building the robots to compete. It's all the learning that goes into it. What goes on here is we're competing against each other, but we're helping each other," Santos said. "If your robot is having problems, somebody else from the other team is going to come help you, even if they are going to compete against you. We're all here trying to win, but I think the biggest win is we're all learning to work together. No matter who you are, we're here to help each other," he added. Being part of the Robotics Team teaches students to work together, Desai said. Local sponsorship allowed schools from as far away as Chile to come and compete in the two-day event. "Our school helped sponsor the Chilean team. They were short on funds because of the earthquake, so we helped them get the money so they could get here and we helped them get the money so they could get a robot in the competition," Santos said. "We said, we didn't have much, but we'll share what we have. Every weekend the class would Skype with the students in Chile over the six-week building period." Manual Arts provided enough support to allow Chile to bring 12 of their 26 team members . The rest watched Friday's events on Skype, the internet video/audio program that allows live communications. Mentors were also an important part of the six-week process, Santos said. "Aside from any engineering concepts or major fixes or questions, mentors are on- hand for support. We wouldn't have the success we have without mentors," he said. "It's something for a teacher to teach something, but when you have a mentor there who actually does that as their job, where they are doing that and are applying it everyday and they are sharing that with kids then it becomes real." Competition continues today. [email protected], 562-499-1476 FIRST Robotics Competition Los Angeles Regional 8 a.m. Pits and machine shop open 8:45 a.m. Opening ceremonies 9:15 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Seeding matches 12:30 p.m. to 12:45 p.m Alliance Selections 12:45 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. Lunch 1:45 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. Final rounds 5 p.m. Awards ceremony 6:30 p.m. Pits close, crates packed for shipping Free admission Schedule subject to change. To see more of the Press-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.press-telegram.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Press-Telegram, Long Beach, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |