After School: The Robotics Club
By Kelley Wilson, Summit freshman
“Can I transfer my bot into a sumo-bot?”
It’s 3:18 p.m. Monday afternoon in Room 109 of the Lower School. A group of fourth- through seventh grade students rush into the room and make themselves comfortable. Shoes are off, ties are untied, and shirts are untucked.
The Robotics Club at The Summit is supervised by Kent Heyward of the technology team. The students spend their afternoons discussing their ideas with him and listening to his advice.
The club of twenty students meets in small groups four days a week after school for an hour, except Fridays when meetings extend nearly two hours. Meetings are unstructured. For the most part the students build independently but don’t hesitate to ask each other for advice. “The kids learn how to work together here,” Mr. Heyward said.
In the center of the room is a wooden board several feet wide, cut into the shape of a circle, like a sumo wrestling mat. There are always at least two students on the ground competing with their robots on this sumo mat. The point of the game is to program a robot to force an opposing robot outside the boundaries of the mat. The movement of the robots, which look like toy cars made out of Legos, are programmed via computer. The kids talk about mass and speed. After each bout they discuss what caused one robot to be successful over another. They then go back to their computers to improve the performance of their “bots.” They work intently and are free to build whatever kind of robot they please. It is clear that the kids have looked forward to this activity all day.
Mr. Heyward spends the hour helping the students construct new robots, finding lego pieces, and quizzing them about the outcome of various bouts. “It’s a way to use critical thinking skills to build things and figure out why things work the way they do,” he said. “It also introduces them to different ways of solving problems.”
Critical thinking skills are a major part of robotics. Every time the kids build a new robot, they have to decide whether they want their robot to have speed or power. These variables, as well as how the robot is constructed, determine which one wins. Side conversations are common along with jokes; at one point a young boy even starts singing! Common expressions include, “I got a speed demon!” or “Look! I crushed it!”
With not a single mention of time, it seemed to fly by.
