Wiesbaden robotics club readies for competition
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WIESBADEN, Germany — Students in Wiesbaden High School’s RoboWarriors club are heading to Orlando, Fla., next month to see how a basketball playing robot they built stacks up against robots constructed by their peers.
The students from Wiesbaden, along with some help from Kaiserslautern High School, are taking part in the annual FIRST Robotics Contest, where 65 teams of students, along with their robots, will participate in the Orlando regional qualifier for the worldwide robotics competition.
FIRST — For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology — is a Manchester, N.H.-based nonprofit organization with the goal of fostering students’ interest in engineering and technology.
Each year, participants are provided a kit of parts that have to be used to build a robot and program it to perform a specific task. After the announcement of the challenge, students have six weeks to build their robot.
This year’s competition, titled “Rebound Rumble,” challenges students to design a robot that can shoot basketballs into one of four hoops on a playing field. Robots must cross a bridge to move from one side of the field to the other.
Although the challenge is straightforward, the robot is anything but simple. It features vision and sonar systems for locating targets, a turret with a spinning-wheel, a drive train that allows the robot to move without steering, a sweeper mechanism designed to scoop up loose balls and a heavy battery to balance the robot on the bridge.
Wiesbaden teacher Frank Pendzich, the team’s adviser and coach, said his squad has a well-rounded “triple threat” robot that’s designed to be equally capable of carrying, passing and shooting a basketball.
Frau POW! 4.0 is the club’s fourth entry in as many years and fifth overall. Last year, the RoboWarriors snagged their best finish yet, placing 34th in the Las Vegas regional. The top six teams in the regional competitions qualify for the April finals in St. Louis.
Although STEM — a nationwide initiative started by President Barack Obama to spur students to excel in science, technology, engineering and math — is a relatively new buzzword in education, Pendzich said the robotics club in Wiesbaden has been a prime example of the hands-on, problem-based approach that the STEM curriculum encourages.
“The work our team has done through FIRST has excited a lot of people,” Pendzich said.
On Thursday, the RoboWarriors were putting the final touches on Frau POW! ahead of the Feb. 21 ship date. Programmers, builders, safety team members and designers were all pitching in, making sure that Frau POW! delivers.
For some, it encouraged and reinforced a love of engineering.
“I’ve already been looking for civil engineering colleges; this has helped me know that’s really what I want to do,” said Wiesbaden junior Eli Kraft, as he built a plate on which to mount the robot’s motor.
That’s what his coach likes to hear.
“We know in our school system that over the next 16 years, that we’re going to need a lot of students graduating with an interest in engineering to help them prepare for a very complex world,” Pendzich said. “It’s not about robots; it’s really about preparing engineers for the world of work.”
