Annual Robotics Tournament tests teams' talents
POTSDAM — Half of Clarkson University's Walker Center was turned into a robot garage Friday, as 200 students tweaked remote-controlled devices before putting them to the test.
The third annual Robotics Tournament pitted 21 teams from around the north country and from as far as New Jersey and Pennsylvania against each other in a competition to see who could design and maneuver the best robot.
Between rounds, teams met behind a curtain to fix — and sometimes totally revamp — their robots.
"Everybody runs back here, gets their tools out and scrambles to change everything," said Carter F. Eldridge, Parishville-Hopkinton Central School's adviser. "Kids can plan and plan and plan, but until you get it built, you don't really know how it's going to work. So all of these teams do a lot of trial and error."
The Parishville-Hopkinton team was going on its fourth robot redesign right before competition Friday. Students had built, tested and dismantled three different robots on Thursday alone, hoping to perfect their device at the last minute.
"Our last design had two wheels, but we couldn't get enough force to shoot the ball up the ramp," said Jordan A. Gary, a junior on Parishville-Hopkinton's "Panthera Mechanica" team. "This morning, we had nothing."
The "Hot Shot" challenge required students to create a device that can pick up plastic balls and toss them into one of two goals to score points — almost like robot basketball, without the dribbling.
"You have to build robots that can propel balls into the goals in the center, or in the last 30 seconds, you can toss them into bins outside the ring," said Ross Radford, a 12th-grade aspiring video-game programmer on one of two teams from Upper Dublin, Pa. "Our robot uses two wheels that spin in opposite directions to propel the ball like a gun."
The competition encourages students to learn about simple machines — the building blocks of engineering — as well as problem-solving and teamwork. The tournament is sponsored nationally by the organization For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, and locally by the Northern New York Robotics Institute.
"It helps students with thinking skills, to show them how science, math and engineering fit together, so they can do the engineering," said Ellen J. Glasgow, coordinator of enrichment activities for the St. Lawrence-Lewis Board of Cooperative Educational Services, which backs the event along with Clarkson. "They have fun, too."
Two hundred grade school students on 17 teams crowded the arena floor Saturday for the FIRST Lego League Challenge. The "Smart Move" challenge called for 9- to 14-year-olds to design efficient modes of transportation using Legos.
