By Kevin SieffSunday, March 13, 2011; 11:55 PM
From a classroom in Anacostia, Brittany Robinson, 14, is programming a robot to perform open heart surgery. She's focused, squinting at the small machine, weighing in periodically on the intricacies of computer science and engineering.
Never mind that the robot and the heart are made of Legos.
Her team at KIPP DC: AIM Academy, a charter school, is part of a burgeoning program that uses the children's toys to make engineering more exciting and accessible to students in elementary, middle and high school - an effort that has experienced success in its first years.
At Washington area Lego robotics competitions, Brittany's team is one of a small but growing number of predominantly African American groups. Although most of the Virginia/DC First Lego League's 3,500 entrants and 437 teams are from the suburbs, the Symbiotic Titans are one of a few teams from east of the Anacostia River. Maryland also has a First Lego League.
For many on the D.C. team, robotics has been a revelation.
"I knew the basics of what engineers do, but I didn't know all the things that go with robotics," Brittany said. "I didn't know what it takes to complete a mission."
FIRST LEGO League continues to motivate as well as reward students who are involved. This article is a great example of the influence the contest has on students.
In the article, Brittany Robinson, age 14, states she knew the basics of engineers jobs but did not know all the things associated with Robotics.
I just think it is go great to hear students articulate what the contest has exposed to them to.
FRC 233: THE PINK TEAM Builds SWAT Robot
PDBot, a SWAT robot designed and built by FIRST Robotic Competition students from The Pink Team for their local police department.
PDBot as it was built (left); PDBot as conceptualized in PTC's Pro/ENGINEER (now rebranded as Creo Elements/Pro).
When Detective Christopher Cochie from Rockledge Police Department, Florida, first approached FIRST Robotic Competition (FRC) Team 233 to help build a robot for his SWAT team, he had something fairly simple in mind, like a remote-controlled miniature car with a camera mounded on the hood. The team took his ideas, added some of their own, and came back to him instead with a state-of-the-art robot that could climb up steps, trudge through mud, toss a phone, launch flash bangs, and do much more.
Its creators, a group of students from FRC Team 233, were well-versed in the mechanics of robotics, thanks to the competitions they’d participated in. Given the chance to help their local police officers, they jumped at the opportunity, enlisting the help of their teacher and FIRST mentor Marian Passmore and their FIRST sponsor NASA. (Team members were mostly from the Cocoa Beach area, roughly 15 miles away from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.)
Another FRC team working their magic in their neighborhood. FRC Team 233, The Pink Team (http://www.thepinkteam.org/) built a SWAT robot for the Police Department in Rockledge, Florida.
Read the entire article at the link above.
"We load the drawing up in DraftSight, clean it up and then export it to a 2.5-D CAM package and generate the code to build the parts."
In the fall BEST competition, the team needed a custom wheel called an "omniwheel" to enable better robot stability without constricting freedom of motion. In a fast-moving competition, the only thing worse than a clumsy drive system is an unstable robot. A complex omniwheel could fix both problems, but most teams won’t attempt to make one because of its complexity. Undeterred, one of Ousley’s students designed a single omniwheel made from 18 custom parts. He was able to draw it in DraftSight, then cut it from Lexan using the CNC on a weekend afternoon.
"It is a little tricky to build this kind of stuff, but DraftSight makes it easier," said Ousley. "DraftSight is the perfect tool for quick 2D part design. It’s easy to learn, easy to teach, and has an easy path to CAM. Plus it’s free, which means no barriers for use by our school."
It worked. After winning a local competition, Ousley’s Westlake High School robotics team competed at the Texas BEST Robotics Competition at the University of North Texas’s Coliseum in Denton, Texas. Against 47 other teams from Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, they finished eighth. They also won second place in the Founders Award for Creative Design, which goes to the team that makes the best use of the engineering process in consideration of offensive and defensive capabilities in machine design.
At this spring’s FIRST Robotics Competition, you can bet they’ll be refining the CAD/CAM capabilities they adopted in the fall. Those robots are north of 100 pounds, use vision-enabled real-time embedded computers and are built from aluminum, carbon fiber, steel and sweat.
"Our newfound ability to design, fabricate and modify complex components during the short build season is an intense learning experience disguised as a competitive advantage," said Ousley.
The Westlake High Chap Robotics team is sponsored by National Instruments, Texas Instruments, Pixels & Verbs and others. Mentors like Ousley volunteer time to work with teams after school. While the mentors provide guidance and make sure everybody is safe, the students do most of the work.
Both the BEST and FRC contents involve more than designing, building and operating a robot. They also include building and running a website, marketing, public outreach to younger students, communications, fundraising and teamwork - "intense teamwork," added Ousley.
YouTube video of an omniwheel robot
Wikipedia on omniwheels video showing a BEST competition
Source:
Tim Ousleytim.ousley(at)ni.com Tim Ousley | Senior Engineer | Wireless DAQ R&D | National Instruments 512-683-6671
Dessault Systemes featured an article about the mentorship of Tim Ousley, National Instruments with our team utilizing DraftSight to design our Omni Wheels for our BEST robotics competition robot for Total Recall.
We will be competing at the BEST Championships in Orlando Florida on April 14-17, 2011.
Students are so lucky to be able to have mentors such as Tim working with them. Tim with the aid of one of Team 2468's students completed a CNC over the summer and early Fall. Tim worked with the students to utilize DraftSight to design the parts for the Omni Wheels. The students used Tim's CNC to manufacture the parts for the wheels. We need more schools to take part in such programs as well as mentors such as Tim and companies like Desssault Systemes. Contests such as FIRST and BEST allow students to work on real world problems; propose and test solutions; identify setbacks, successes and failures; and learn from professionals utilizing industry standards and practices.
Thank you to Tim, National Instruments and Dessault Systemes for allowing my team to participate.
Posts
