A little contraption made of yellow and blue Lego beams whirs across a demonstration table at the Missoula fairgrounds. One of the robot’s programmers, middle schooler Oliver Nowles, explains the design.
“So, basically, we have a back crane, which lifts up. And we also have the front arm, which can move things left to right,” Nowles says.
Washington Middle School’s “Robosapiens” robotics team is one of Montana’s best performers in the FIRST LEGO League challenge. It’s an annual competition where teams from across the country build and program a robot to complete a series of tasks on a table.
The team also came up with an invention to aid future explorers of the ocean, which is the competition’s theme this year. Their idea?
“It was about an electric shark that swam around in the ocean collecting trash,” seventh grader Maizie Ward says.
“Elektra,” as they named their robot shark, would use sensors and filters to suck garbage and plastics out of the ocean, while leaving critters unharmed. They modeled their invention using paper-mâché and presented it to judges at a world competition in Massachusetts this June. They earned a finalist award — one of only four honors handed out among the more than 100 teams.
“Yeah, I was really nervous,” Ward says. “But, it was really fun, and really cool to meet all the other teams from around the world.”
Coach Alec Arntzen says robotics is a lot less about the Legos and much more about teamwork and innovation, something he says this year’s team had in spades.
“You’re already the cream of the crop being there,” Arntzen says. “So, to come away with a trophy on top of getting to compete is very, very special.”
The Robosapiens are just one of several groups under the Missoula Robotics Team umbrella. Students in the older age group this year built a complex robot designed to help rehabilitate reefs.
Arntzen says Montana has added more than a dozen student robotics teams annually in recent years.
