Campers electrified by robotics

Aug 17, 2018

“When our robot moved on its own, it was great!” Tiago Lameiro, 11, enthused. “And when we started programming, that’s when it got exciting.”

Lameiro was one of around 16 kids who spent the week building and programming robots at a free camp hosted by the Dartmouth High School robotics team at the Southworth Library.

While high school teammates Nicholas Barnes, Vaibhav Dubey, Nick McMaster, Brian Leong, and William Fang were teaching the group of middle schoolers robotics, they learned a lot, too.

This is the first year the club has run a camp. The teammates organized and operated the camp completely on their own, without the help of teachers. It was not a totally new endeavor, however: they have been working with younger students for years at the library and elementary schools in town.

“It’s just been really cool to see them go through the same challenges that we go through,” said Nick McMaster. “Now that we know what it’s like, we definitely want to do it again.”

Over the course of the week, the four teams of campers each built a robot to compete in solving a specific, two part challenge, based on the ones that the high schoolers solve.

The robots had to cross a line of blue tape and stop before passing a line of white tape completely autonomously, meaning that campers had to write the program for the robot to follow without their involvement.

Then, they had to put as many foam cubes as possible in their team’s square in two minutes, as each team member took a turn driving the robot.

The challenge, and the robots that the teams produced, were very sophisticated. One team, the Hexes, composed of Brian and Steven Wei, Tiago Lameiro, and Tyler Ferreira, programmed their robot to turn to the right after passing the blue line, so that they would be in an ideal position to collect blocks quickly.

Another team, Nuts and Bolts, built their robot with a claw-like arm that grabbed the blocks.

“It looks cool, and it works,” said Aidan Santos, 11.

“It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done,” Harry Holmes, 13, said of his experience at the camp.

The competition began on Friday afternoon, as William Fang called out countdowns and told teams when to switch drivers. Although some teams had mechanical difficulties or dead batteries, problems were part of the learning experience.

“When your robot fails, that still counts,” McMaster explained to the campers. “Failures happen all the time at real competitions. It happens.”

For each spot of trouble, there were moments of triumph in the suspenseful matches leading up to the final, double-elimination tournament that rounded out the camp.