12 minute read
Middle School Robotic Clubs
Pine Lake Middle School Robotic Club
By Priya Krishnan Pine Lake Robotic Club supervisor and creator
The Pine Lake Robotic Club is a Pine Lake Middle School effort to bring mechanical engineering and software enthusiasts under one umbrella to work on missions and improve problem-solving skills. This club consists of 25 kids, mentors, and supervisors who all work on various robotics challenges. The club works on competition problems aligned with First Robotics. For Grade 7 and above, they are part of the First Tech Challenge (FTC). Those Grade 6 and above are part of the First Lego League Challenge (FLL).
The goal of our club is to foster a learning environment for students who are enthusiastic about learning to evolve robots to solve engineering challenges. The students work together on engineering problem sets, including mechanical, software and develop game skills. The students work together as a team by dividing themselves into various interest areas like 3D modeling, software design, arm design, field setup, game strategy, business, and driving.
To be part of the FTC, students must give their time, be respectful, show the ability to learn new areas, have some prior knowledge, display persistence not to give up, and have self-motivation to dive deep into areas like design, software, or game strategy. For our FLL teams, we are happy to work with those who have little experience but are eager to work on solving problems and are self-motivated.
Typically, from fall to early spring, teams work on First Robotics challenges that are posted by the FIRST Inspires. Later in the year, the mentors come up with more challenges on their own for the students to learn new techniques to improve the robots. The team continues to evolve by teaching their next class to set them up for success.
The reason for starting this club, along with our dear Principal Ms. Cappy, is to provide a space for Pine Lake kids to develop their skills and eventually compete in this area. As a mentor, I am passionate about software and building robots. This provides a great avenue to teach and learn. Personally, having led engineering teams building ambiguous problem-solving challenges in the real world, this effort is to generate that enthusiasm at the grassroots level. In addition, this provides experience and groundwork for those interested in joining Skyline Robotics in the future and have a better chance of showing interest and continuing in this field in the future.
Pine Lake Middle School Robotic Club student
JingYan Xu, 6th grade
I joined this club because I was interested in robotics and wanted to be part of a club. The club meeting is slightly chaotic, but mostly everyone is focused on their work or mission. There are competitions, and currently, we are working on one of them. My favorite part of joining this club is meeting new people and building Legos. An exciting story from a club meeting was making a replacement for a missing part. When we were building the robot, we did not have a Lego piece, so I made a replacement. Even though it was not perfect, it was good enough for the time being. The biggest challenge I have encountered inside this club is that members have different ideas about how to solve a problem. After some conversations, the resolution was to have people take turns sharing their ideas and solutions to a problem.
Sanvi Madan, 8th grade
My reason for joining this club is to gain exposure to the world of robotics and learn how to collaborate with others to create something truly amazing. A robot can’t be built overnight, and it takes many interactions, designs, and hard work to create something that even comes close to what some First Tech Challenge (FTC) robots can do. I wanted to go through that process and learn what it’s like to collaborate with a team.
A FTC competition typically consists of a judging process at the beginning of the competition, followed by several different robot matches. Each team has about 7-8 matches and is partnered with another robot team to form an alliance each round. There are many competitions throughout the year that get more selective as you go on. It works like a basketball bracket; teams keep getting eliminated until you have your final winner.
My favorite part about joining this club is the people I’m meeting and the experiences that I am gaining. At our first competition back in November, we experienced what it was like to go through a judging process, compete, and collaborate with other teams, which I found extremely humbling. As a team, we gained exposure to different thinking styles, thought processes, and designs.
As this season has progressed, we’ve experienced many hardships as a team. However, one of our biggest challenges involved communication. All of our team members were hacking away at their part of the robot, but nobody ever talked about their thought process or design ideas for that segment of the robot. This resulted in many people being confused at the initial design when we tried to piece all the parts together. After this incident, we learned and were able to connect and collaborate while building our parts so that everyone knew what was going on and how the robot design was made.
Aashi Mathur, 8th grade
I joined the Robotic Club because I wanted to learn more about robotics and get more experience in building. During the meetings, our team works together to get the robot out on the game field and to finish any fixes to the robot. My favorite part of the club is being able to find solutions to problems that are occurring with our robot and accomplishing them. Our biggest problem was when we couldn’t build the linear slides, but we fixed it by continuously trying to fix the belt. Eventually, we got it right and could attach it to the robot.
Disha Vaithianadan, 8th grade
I joined robotics because I wanted to learn to code in a different way. I was curious about what kinds of challenges arise from programming robots. I also wanted to learn some more about how robots work. We meet in a designated room for our robotics team outside school hours, usually after school. We have at least three competitions during the school year, which take place on weekends so as not to interfere with school. My favorite part of robotics is the competition days when we can see our work in action and the unique take others have on the competition. The biggest challenge that I have encountered in this club was getting a working PID controller for the drivetrain. There were so many little details that needed to be fixed, along with the controller being difficult to tune. It took a lot of effort, but we now have several functions running on a PID controller.
Ritika Rastogi, 8th grade
One reason I joined this club was to gain experience in all aspects of robotics: build, design, and software. During the team meetings, we discuss our goals for robot design and plan for the FTC 2023-2024 challenge. We do have FTC competitions throughout the school year. My favorite part of the club is the amazing people I work with and mentor me. I am also able to learn new things as I continue robotics. Our team did not have our robot ready for our first competition. Instead of not participating, we worked hard on the robot all day until it was finished. We still went to the competition!
Pine Lake Middle School Robotic Club Mentor
Natalie Cui, 9th grade, Skyline High School
When I was in 5th grade, I joined my first robotics team. Because my school didn't have a robotics team back then (but I'm so glad they do now), I participated in a FIRST Lego League (FLL) community team. That's where my journey in robotics began. Later, I joined my first school team at Pine Lake Middle School. Despite joining mid-season, I still got many opportunities to apply the experience gained in FLL to my next big step, the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC). I also met new people and learned new knowledge. During FTC meetings, I was first introduced to the FIRST Robotics Competition and the Spartabots by our mentors, who continue to guide and teach me. I'm a 9th grader at Skyline High School now and a proud member of our robotics club.
Whether you start with a community team or join your school team if it's available, it's a worthwhile learning experience. You get to team up with other students who are just as into it as you are, learning how to build, program, and control robots. What's super helpful is that the older team members are always so generous about sharing what they know with the younger crew. I also really enjoy robotics competitions. It's not just about battling it out with other teams; it's a chance for all of us to showcase our achievements, exchange resources, and have a blast celebrating together.
Something I didn't realize at first was how important reaching out is. The team can tell everyone about how excellent STEM education is, get younger kids excited about robotics, connect with local groups and businesses, and maybe even score some sponsors. And get this, it's kind of cool to think of R.O.B.O.T. as standing for Reaching Out, Building Opportunities Together. Being on the robotics team isn't just about learning technical skills. It also allows us to take responsibility and develop leadership.
Li Xie, 12th grade, Skyline High School
In 2018, I was introduced to the world of FIRST Tech Challenge by a Spartabots Mentor. This led to me discovering my passion for engineering and the process of continual iteration and innovation. So, when I heard about the opportunity to restart the PLMS robotics team, I remembered the opportunity I was given. PLMS was a chance to spread my passion, one that I experienced as a middle schooler that turned me into a robotics enthusiast. This made a complete cycle of spreading knowledge and continuing to spread my fiery passion.
In the club, I am the technical mentor, giving ideas and helping the students through the robot's design, assembly, and refinement process. I showcase the steps I take to build a robot. I also share my personal experiences to help prevent them from falling into the potholes I have fallen into. Typically, at a meeting, I help guide them in decisions on how to build the robot, as they need to fully experience the process and make the final decision about the robot.
My favorite part of this club is when I see their faces light up in joy once they successfully achieved something. The most prominent example is at the first competition. Everyone was unsure whether they would pass the robot inspection. Miraculously, they were able to do it on the first try. Immediately after receiving the news, they jumped around in achievement and were overfilled with joy. These moments of joy continue leading me to mentor and spread the joy of robotics.
The biggest challenge is probably ensuring the students stay on task. They are very energetic and sometimes will deviate into other subjects that are not robotics-related. At these times, I have to constantly remind them to stay on task as they have a competition approaching soon.
Suchith Sunku, 12th grade, Skyline High School
I was originally inclined to join this club because my friends all joined, but I was immediately enticed by the club and the things we created. I spend a lot of my time helping with outreach activities and mentoring the nearby elementary and middle schools.
My favorite thing about the club is the team culture and the history the club boasts. In the past, the seniors have always been the ones to guide us to success. Now, I get the pleasure of doing the same with the underclassmen. The biggest challenge that I have encountered in this club was probably during our competition last March. Our robot was not working at all, so we had to skip a couple of matches to fix the robot. We were on a major time crunch, but luckily, we were able to fix it after two hours of constant work under pressure.
Beaver Lake Middle School Robotic Club
Beaver Lake Middle School robotic club has a successful year in 2022-23. According to Sri Patil at the Issaquah Reporter, under the leadership of the robotics teacher Mr. Kevin Christensen, with the unwavering support provided by Principal Ms. Kathryn Coffin and guidance provided by parent volunteers, the Beaver lake Middle School robotics FTC teams, Beta Bionix (17595) and Alpha Intelligence (15337), won the FIRST Tech Challenge Washington State Championship as Winning Alliance First and Second picks respectively on Jan. 28, 2023. Its FTC teams were the only middle school teams to qualify for the Washington State Championship.
Beaver Lake Middle School Robotic Club supports two levels of FIRST Robotics: FIRST Lego League (FLL) and FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC).
