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Community Corner

Robot Invasion of Sewickley Continues as Local Team Prepares for Championships

Robots have established a foothold in the garage of a local home, where a team of fifth graders meets each Sunday to build, program, and prepare for the First Lego League Championships. The Robotikinz, as they call themselves, are seven Quaker Valley students that gathered to form a team last fall. Although two of the team members had participated in robotics briefly, most had no experience. They were undaunted though. As Allison Zeanchock noted, “I joined because I love to do computer robot stuff. I want to go to college for computer graphic design.”

With a second place trophy for Teamwork in regional competition and a fifth place point score with their robot in running missions during competition, the Robotikinz are headed to the FLL championships on February 22 in Pittsburgh. Their robot, built from LEGO pieces, has recently gone through a major re-design and is getting stronger with each meeting. Phoebe Morrill described the new robot: “It’s slim and has a basket on it to carry things to the end zone. We have a touch sensor also.”  Zahra Udaipurwala added: “It has three motors to do work. The third motor runs the arm. The touch sensor tells the robot whether to run another program or not and gives it time to reset.” The newly added features make a difference, according to Paige Gabriele. She says “We used to just run over the objects and destroy them which worked but with the arm, we’ll probably get more points because it does another function.” 

First Lego League robotics competition is not just about building the robot. The Robotikinz also researched tsunamis and worked with architect (and dad) Steve Ashmore to design a home that could withstand monster waves. As part of the team worked with the robot, others including Beccah Bischack poured their artistic effort into preparing a diagram of their design. Coach Jamie Morrill has been working with the Robotikinz as they learn to write programs for the robot on the computer.

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The members of Team Robotikinz are busy people but they have found that being on a robotics team is worth the effort. When asked how Robotikinz differed from her other activities, Giboney Ashmore reflected that “It’s different because some of my other activities aren’t as creative they give you something to do and you have to do it.” Other team members agreed, commenting that “other activities don’t include working with others and thinking things through” and “you have to learn a new language, the robot language” and “you get to learn new things and ideas”.

Like other local teams, Robotikinz members enjoy the benefits of an all girls’ team, including the fact that they “can work better because you know girls better than you know boys” and that they “encourage each other and cheer each other on rather than working alone”. One member feels that “In front of boys I feel like I can’t be myself, but when I’m with my friends on my team I can be crazy.” As they gear up for competition, the Robotikinz are positive about their chances. Echoing the feeling of the team, Genevieve Moffett said “I think we’ll do pretty well if we can get our robot programmed in time”. 

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