Transforming ideas into robots

The Baltimore Sun

Before Matthew Hoffman even tested his robot in the competition arena set up in a meeting room at the Carroll County Agriculture Center, he ran into a problem.

No matter what the 10-year-old pressed on the control in his hands, the machine he had constructed and programmed, with his father's help, wouldn't budge.

A quick peek in the back of the box he held revealed the trouble.

"The battery's not in," he said, turning to exchange the control for the correct -- and fully equipped -- one.

Matthew tried again.

"There we go," he said, as the metallic object on wheels rolled forward, heading toward a small hill of neon yellow softballs.

Matthew and fellow members of the Sparks 4-H Club were having practice robot runs in preparation for this year's Carroll County 4-H & FFA Fair, which begins Saturday.

For these youths, July 28 marks their first larger-scale appearance at the event, where they are scheduled to put on a robotics demonstration.

"A lot of people think of 4-H as agriculture. But even in agriculture, technology is becoming a big part," said Dave Franc, the club's leader. "Technology is becoming more and more a part of everything."

Last year, the club used a table and smaller robots that moved balls from one side of the surface to the opposite end, Franc said. But time has fortified Sparks' ranks -- growing from about 20 to 30 members, many of them new to 4-H, Franc said -- and its show. Now an official competition arena -- from a company that makes the robot parts -- serves as the playing field.

The club's younger members will also have their turn, Franc said. They plan to have a Lego Mindstorms display, he said, featuring a small model of the fair with a Lego machine making its way through, picking up things.

The competition field consists of a gray foam floor, with corners marking off goals with red and blue tape, respectively. Although there are five teams with their own unique robots, there are two alliances, red and blue, each with two teams working together.

The teams have been preparing for the game off and on since January, Franc said. Beyond fostering the spirit of competition, the activity is a lesson in creative thinking -- and teamwork.

The game rounds, lasting two minutes and 20 seconds, are a race to accrue points by either shuttling softballs past the other alliance's corner goal line for one point, or lifting the balls into higher, triangular-prism-shaped goals along the perimeter for three points, Franc said. And if a robot manages to hang from the metal "chin-up" bar rooted in the platform at the field's center without touching the ground, its alliance will earn 15 points.

Donations helped make the projects possible, he said. The thousands of dollars helped purchase the field and parts, as well as the six used laptops that kids -- or their parents -- repeatedly hunched over last week, trying to iron out kinks in their robot's programming for game day.

Those kinks, and the unpredictability of whether their machines will become what they envisioned, seemed enough to drive the club's members.

"I thought it was really fun," Matthew said. "You never know what's going to work and what's not going to work." He recalled a problem with a shoveling mechanism, meant to pick up softballs, that was starting in the wrong position. What he initially thought was a physical, design problem turned out to be solved through the programming.

While Matthew opted for a design with one tier, the members of "Chicas Chispas" -- Spanish for "Sparks Girls," they said -- had set their sights on the higher three-point goals. Their robot sported an additional level with a basket that rose high enough to dump softballs into the triangular-prism goals.

"How do you reload that?" Matthew asked, after watching their robot drop two balls in.

"We're working on it still," Kathryn Franc, 14, said. Kathryn, along with her sister Danielle and their other teammate, Samantha Brehm, had to finish a part that, when functioning properly, should lift balls from the ground and into the bucket. "We decided to go for more points instead of just [pushing] the balls," Kathryn said, explaining their design choice.

A mix of reasons spurred Sparks members to participate.

"I like how you can design your own thing," Kathryn said. "You don't have to follow a pattern."

Danielle, 11, had seen high-school competitions with bigger robots, and knew she wanted a chance to do something like that.

The nuts and bolts of the process intrigued Samantha. "I've just sort of always been interested in how things work," the 13-year-old said, adding that she found the programming particularly fun.

That aspect also drew Alex Olson, 14, to the club. For the aspiring inventor, the robot activity had been a good learning experience, his father, Wayne, said.

On Saturday, Alex, Matthew and their Sparks 4-H cohorts will finally unveil their "inventions" for Carroll County to see.

arin.gencer@baltsun.com

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