Night of Robots and Engineering Challenges Used to Entice Future Engineers

By Emily Eisenhauer

More than 15 middle school students crowded into the robotics room Feb. 1 to learn about the Foley Freeze as part of the annual Foley Experience to let potential future students learn about clubs at Bishop Foley.

The boys and girls, among more than 90 students to visit the school that Friday night, participated in engineering and robot challenges and had a chance to see the prototype for this year’s robot. The tour was conducted by over 10 members of the team showed off robotics and accompanied the kids to an exciting Foley basketball afterwards.

The visit to the robotics room and workshops are an important part of recruiting for future teams as well as helping parents see the variety of activities available at the school. Other clubs such as Medical Science and Business also gave tours. The event also gives members of the robotics team and robotics class opportunities to become better mentors and spread their excitement to new generations.

“It was very interesting to watch the creativity and the awe of the people not on the team to experience the excitement of engineering and watching the unique mindsets. It was pretty fascinating.” said Kaitlyn Chornoby, a mentor who was present.  

The first challenge put students in pairs to build the tallest tower possible out of only paper and tape. At each level of the tower, two pieces of candy were placed on a platform to see if the tower could withstand the weight. The teams had to devise a way to effectively stabilize their structures and use formations to maintain the weight and achieve the tallest height. The tallest tower rose about four feet off the ground.

The second challenge involved a battle between small bots manually controlled by the kids. The robotics class built the robots and several students prepared the competition and explained the rules to the middle school kids.

Three small bots with three wheels were set up with a larger controller to maneuver the robot. The goal of the game was to flip the other robots upright; the flipped robots could still maneuver the field. To completely inhibit the other players, the robots could be flipped onto their tops after being pushed upright, each round lasted about 2 minutes.

The kids also got the chance to see a demonstration of the prototype robot for this year’s competition – which simulates robots loading cargo into rockets and cargo ships.. Robotics members from the prototyping subteam explained how to control the robot and showed how it grabs game pieces.

After being shown how the prototype handles the game pieces, some of the children maneuvered the robot themselves. It was a great learning experience for the kids while being able to see and control a real prototype.