Interest in robotics grows at Lawrence

Interest in robotics has exploded at Lawrence High School as a team that began as a club with about five regular participants last school year has team coach and technology teacher Lee Wolin now teaching two sections of robotics this year.
The students meet for one period every four days in addition to the club, which meets after school. “They develop game strategies,” Wolin said. “They are designing a robot to complete particular tasks and effectively compete against other robots. They learn practical application of concepts learned in physical sciences classes and programming skills (to control the robots). They develop cooperative skills through working as a team and by delegating responsibilities to other team members.”
In the VEX Robotics competition, the team will be designing and developing a robot that will move objects around a playing field to score points against opposing teams. The competition is based around a game where each team (one robot) is paired with another team to form an alliance. Each alliance competes against others. The state competition will be hosted by Adelphi University in Garden City on Jan. 24, 2015.
The game for the qualifying competition involves moving objects while using robotics around a 12-foot by 12-foot playing field. Points are awarded to each alliance when their robot moves the objects, for this particular competition, cube blocks, over obstacles into specified goal areas, stacking the cubes onto poles. The alliances compete for points and simultaneously try to take points away from other alliances. The alliance with the highest score wins.
There are several local VEX games that are hosted by schools and organizations. The winners of the local qualifying games go on to compete at the state level games (the one Adelphi is hosting). Winners from Adelphi advance to the world competition held in Louisville, Ky., April 15-18, 2015.

Brandon Behar, a 16-year-old junior from Atlantic Beach, remembers having a lot of work in preparing for last year’s state competition. “We had three weeks to make a full robot,” he said. “We didn’t know what we were doing at first. After working out the coding (the language the robot’s computer uses to operate), I have since learned a few different ones to program into the robot.”
Behar was disappointed when they came in second place at the state qualifier last year, and is using what he learned from past competitions to prepare for success this year. “We lost by one point,” he said. “Our robot stopped moving. We tried fixing it, but things like this happen in the real world.”
Tom Lira of Inwood, also a 16-year-old junior, said that he likes being a member of the club because he enjoys working with robots and his investment of time and effort into the club. “Competitions are really fun,” he said. “All my experiences with this team have been pretty positive. I like meeting people from other schools. I like seeing other schools’ designs, how other schools approach the obstacles we’re given.”
For more information about the VEX competitions, visit www.vexrobotics.com.