The Circuit Breakers Robotics Club at Bradie Shrum is ready for another year of competition! The group attended a scrimmage at the end of October and earned first place in the table competition portion of the event and received tips and feedback on ways to improve for their first competition this coming weekend at Center Grove Middle School.
The club is composed of third, fourth and fifth grade students and is led by Emily Johnson and Crystal Mikels. Members are selected based on their performance during the robotics and coding units during their STEAM classes the year prior since the season starts right at the start of school.
“We have two teams this year, an Explore team that has two third graders and four 4th graders, and a Challenge team that has 10 members - three 4th graders and seven 5th graders,” said Johnson.
Johnson explained that each year there is a theme for the competition. Previous themes have been Superpowered, City Shaper and Cargo Connect.
“This year’s theme is Masterpiece, which focuses on the A (arts) in STEAM,” explained Johnson. “There are 15 missions on the game board, each worth a different amount of points. At the start of the season, we had team members pair up and pick a mission that they thought they could program a robot to complete. After we had completed programs, they created a strategy as to how efficiently they could get the most points with their missions.”
For Lego Robotics, there are four parts: the table game, the innovation project, robot design, and core values. Each part is worth 25% of the total score. This is what the team will compete in this weekend.
Johnson said the innovation project is a community project that the team must come up with that goes along with the theme.
“This year, the team had to use the arts to find a way to share their hobby with others,” she said. “Our team decided that they wanted to come up with a way to share their love of basketball with others who may be financially struggling to afford to join a team.”
The group created interview questions that Mr. Hickey (the high school girls’ basketball coach) and Mr. Nice (the high school boys basketball coach) answered for them about basketball. Next, they will meet with Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Davidson, both of whom played basketball in college, to learn some drills they can teach others.
“The end goal is to make a video to share,” said Johnson.
Team member Ava Temple said she was excited about their problem and solution since she is a basketball player herself. She said the group wanted to find a way to help everyone learn how to play basketball that was affordable.
The team will be interviewed by three judges where they are questioned about their programming and robot design. Johnson said they will have to explain how all of their programs work, how and why they designed the robot and attachments the way they did, and how they created their mission strategy.
“Finally, they are judged all day and during the table competition on their display of Gracious Professionalism and the six core values of Lego - inclusion, innovation, impact, discovery, fun, and teamwork,” said Johnson.
Team member Lincoln Corp said he really likes being on the robotics team and when asked what he enjoys most, he said coding the robots.
“I like watching it do what I program it to do!"
