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Perry Robotics Club named top in the world
By James Roth, jroth@acnpapers.com
The DeWitt Perry Middle School Robotics Club has been named one of the top robotics clubs in the world after a recent international competition.
Three teams from Perry traveled to the campus of th University of Southern Illinois for the International Conference on Educational Robotics competition, where they competed against high schools, college prep schools, home schools, vocational and technical schools and charter and magnet schools. Teams were represented from all over the world including the United States, Poland, Japan and the Middle East.
At the end of the competition, Perry Middle School was named the top middle school in the world, and the only middle school in the top 10 overall.
Three teams from Perry competed in a competition called Botball. Botball is challenging robotics contest designed for middle and high school students. Teams must design, program and test up to two robots to play a game. The object of Botball is robots moving and manipulating objects on a 12-by-8 foot game board to score points. Students build and program robots using computer programming software called “C.” The students also build a controller to direct the robots with sensors, motors and even robotic color vision. The robots not remote controlled but instead are completely autonomous. The student’s goal is to program the robot to react intelligently to the changing world around them.
“During the fall our team met and I taught the students how to program in ‘C,’” Culp said. “We would build robots and hold mini-challenges for the kids to compete in. During the fall we meet about 3-4 times per week.”
Culp has been involved with robotics for the past nine years. Culp was a software engineering student at the University of Oklahoma before switching to a science degree. Culp said he heard about the Botball contest from his mentor teacher. Culp then asked Cindy Boyd, the principal at DeWitt Perry at the time, if he could form a robotics club.
“Our first year we had about a dozen kids and the club has grown every year since,” Culp said. “At our height, we had upwards of 40 members. This year we had 36 members, but only 10 went to the competition.”
In addition to the Botball competition, students and teachers also wrote and presented papers and projects related to robotics, education and curriculum. Every student from Perry wrote and presented papers and projects at the conference. The writings done by the students were published in the conference proceedings.
Culp said Botball has been going on since October 1997, and in that time only one middle school has won nationals. This year, out of 39 teams, the three Perry teams came in second, third and 10th place overall.
“We thank everyone for their support. Our club is an expensive organization to run, each Botball team costs $2, 300,” Culp said. “We have to have a lot of support and I would like to thank the parents of the students involved, Perry principal Joe LaPuma, Mansoureh Tehrani the director at the METSA Academy at R.L. Turner and C-FB ISD.”
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