Monrovia robotics students make the grade

If robots are truly the wave of the future, then a group of students at Monrovia High School are definitely at the forefront of it all.
Having competed in a recent national robotics competition in St. Louis, students from the school’s robotics club came away with a great deal of robotics knowledge, said Thomas Dobson, science teacher and advisor to the club.
Dobson added members of the club eat, drink and sleep robotics all year round with competitions happening often during the year.
“Normally, the season starts in September,” he said. “We have a built season that goes into the middle of November. There are qualifying tournaments that we go to. They try to qualify for the various regional qualifying championships. All four of our teams qualified for the L.A. regional championships. Two of them ended up going to the Las Vegas regional championship and one of them went to the L.A., San Diego and Las Vegas regional championships.”
First, Dobson said, the students come up with a video game. Then they have to turn it into something concrete, like physically moving blocks from one spot on the floor to another specific place and put them into something while making sure the robot stays balanced.
“The game itself is based on scoring,” Dobson said. “There’s putting a block on the outside here is worth three points. One on the inside is worth two points and putting one on the floor is worth one point. Having the pendulum balance is worth a 50 percent bonus. Raising the flag at the end of the game gives them more points. Hooking the robot onto the bar there and raising it off the ground is worth more points.”
They put in several hours a week from September through the school year with meetings twice a week, Dobson said. He added the students probably spend more time here than studying for all of their other classes combined.
“Some of these kids are robot junkies for life,” Dobson said. “It’s robots all the time. That’s what they think about. That’s what they do.”
(Shel Segal can be reached at ssegal@beaconmedianews.com. He can be followed via Twitter @segallanded.)

-Story by Shel Segal

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