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ASHLAND, Neb. — The Midwest's next generation of techno-experts competed here Saturday at the Nebraska Robotics Expo.
Some 500 students, most in junior high school in Nebraska, met at the Strategic Air & Space Museum for two robotics competitions.
Faculty members and managers overseeing the event say immersing students in the construction and handling of robots is an excellent way to expose them to science, technology, engineering and math.
“It's very engaging, and they don't realize how much they're learning when they're doing it,” said Brad Barker, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln 4-H science and technology faculty member. He was involved in the First Lego League portion of the robotics festival.
Gov. Dave Heineman welcomed the participants and organizers. “The world is changing at a very rapid pace,” Heineman said. “We need you to be innovators. We need you to be critical thinkers and problem solvers.”
The second event, called the Spirit Showcase, involved a robot developed by the UNL computer and electronics engineering program. That program, together with the University of Nebraska at Omaha's College of Education, has devised a federally funded robot-based curriculum that is expected to be implemented nationwide in two years.
The teams in Saturday's competitions came from Boys & Girl Clubs, home-school programs and public and private schools. Most were from the Omaha area, but teams also came from Wilber, Clay Center, Blair and Wallace, Neb. A home-school team from northern Missouri also participated.
Generally, teams built their robots from kits or models that could be tinkered with, added to and improved upon. Teams in both the First Lego League and Spirit Showcase guided their robots remotely around courses and over obstacles.
Nancy Williams, information technology director of Boys & Girls Clubs of the Midlands, said team members must calculate turn angles, distances, the power necessary for certain tasks and other factors. “They don't realize they're doing physics, but there's a lot of physics involved” in the project, Williams said.
“It's like a puzzle,” said Andrew Cordero, 14, of the Westside Boys and Girls Club's seven-member team. “We all work together as a team, and we get everything done as a team.”
The Data Dragons, a 10-boy Christian home-school team made up of kids from Omaha and Council Bluffs, won the Iowa competition this month and already has qualified for the international meet in Atlanta in April. The Dragons entered the Nebraska meet for practice.
Josiah Krutz, 15, of the Data Dragons said he hoped someday to be an “all-around hacker — in a good sense.”
A good hacker is someone who likes to discover things and use that knowledge to make the world better, he said. Leonardo da Vinci and Martin Luther King Jr. were, in a sense, men who sought to “hack the world” in a good way, he said.
That's what he'd like to do.
Contact the writer:
444-1123, rick.ruggles@owh.com
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