Programmed to win

Students make robots for global competition

With the quick flip of a switch, La Cesta, Spanish for “the basket,” transforms from a vacuum-cleaner looking apparatus into an autonomous robot ready to face a solar flare on a space station.

“It’s like a Roomba without the vacuum. It has a camera so it sees the cup,” explained Josh Boyer, motioning toward a plastic cup. “Then it turns to face the cup, lowers its arm, picks up the cup, sets it in the basket and releases the cup to the other side.”

Boyer, 13, is among the many students from Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District spending long hours building, programming and testing robots in preparation for the 2008 Global Conference on Education Robotics at the University of Oklahoma July 8 to 11. Five teams made up of students from R.L. Turner High School and DeWitt Perry Middle School will be competing against close to 60 teams from around the world in the Global Botball Competition at the conference.

“I like building and I get to practice teamwork with people I probably wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for Botball,” Boyer said.

According to Botball.org, students are given about seven weeks to design, build and program a team of mobile, autonomous robots as well as document the engineering process online. Participants compete against each other on a 4-foot by 8-foot playing field in a fast paced, non-destructive regional tournament.

“The robots are completely autonomous, built and programmed in professional language C,” said David Culp, physics teacher at Turner. “They learn all sorts of technology skills, the no. 1 being programming. Some professional engineers can’t program as well.”

Botball also teaches the students problem solving, since the robots represent hundreds of hours of work.

“The programming can be confusing,” said 15-year-old Nikki Bullis, who is on Turner’s METSA team. “It’s hard to get the exact measurements.”

“The code tells it what do,” said 14-year-old Harrison Allton, who is also on the METSA team. “It’s like giving a blind man instruction.”

In addition to programming and problem solving, the students also learn teamwork and public speaking skills.

“For a lot of kids, this gives them a place to come during the summer. We’re here almost every day,” Culp said.

Teams from C-FB ISD have historically done well at Botball competitions, with teams from Perry coming in first place for five years in a row. Winners receive plaques and grants to help fund team travel costs.

Riley Walberg, 16, and Preston Swain, 18, are on a team from Turner and have a combined nine years of Botball experience.

“We’re hoping to win,” Walberg said. “We don’t know how other teams will do.”

Contact Senitra Horbrook at 972-628-4074 or shorbrook@acnpapers.com. Comment on this story at scntx.com.

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