BCMS Omega Robotics have opportunity of a
lifetime |
February 26, 2018 |
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By Mike Weland
After the Boundary County Middle School Omega
Robotics teams hosted the middle school district
robotics championships earlier this season, just
eking out a berth, they traveled to the
University of Idaho for the state tournament.
Their robot brought home a trophy, but not a
trip to state.
But the innovation, analytic ability and ability
to think outside the box did win them a trip to
state in another required robotics discipline,
and this one won them the Idaho "Most Innovative
Solution" award, and that project will be shown
in competition in Washington, DC, early this
summer.
Not just a national competition, either.
This competition is global, where the "Top 20
Solutions That Could Change the World" will be
selected.
Among those in attendance at the competition
will be the movers and shakers and most
brilliant minds from some of the most cutting
edge companies on the planet, all looking for
ideas and projects.
The top 20 middle school Innovative Solution
projects will go on to be developed by these
companies, but every middle school project
featured will be scrutinized for development
potential, which could bring the schools
benefits including patents and royalties ... and
could bring the students who helped develop them
the benefits of early corporate recognition and
a fast-track to a high-power, high-tech
education and career.
And the top team, in addition to all that, will
get $20,000 to build up their robotics program.
According to BCMS eighth grade science teacher
and robotics coach Jacob Garrison, the members
of Omega robotics teams EV3 and NXT; Seth
Fuller, George Balk, Kaylee McCabe, Grace
Hopkins, Morgan Moon, Liliana Brinkman, Dylan
McLeish, Alex Stella, Logan Cuthbertson, Brycen
Cowin, Colton Hubbell, Tommy Hubbell, Joseph
Carson, Avalena Martin, Cassidi Sams, Brody
Becker, Cory Clairmont, Alonzo Wortley, Gunner
Miller, Brady Siver, Dylan Black and Brendan
Garcia, all did an amazing job as athletes
representing BCMS throughout the season.
"These kids faced adversity that would have had
most grownups give up and quit," Garrison said.
"These students faced overwhelming odds that
came close to derailing them, but their strength
of character and persistence to keep trying, to
never give up, got them through and paid off."
At state, someone made off with the BCMS team's
USB drive with the program to drive their bot
through its complex paces just hours before it
was time to compete.
Without the program, the bot was little more
than a pile of hardware with no brain.
Several of the BCMS Omega teams are veterans,
having been involved in robotics since attending
BFHS Alpha Team robotics camps while in the
fourth and fifth grades, some of whom, now in
the eighth grade, have built their skills to
enable them to work with their high school
counterparts,
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George Balk |
While many on the team nearly gave in to
despair, one of those team leaders, eighth
grader George Balk, thought he had an idea.
What makes what happened next so remarkable,
Garrison said, is that, unlike other school
sports, coaches are not allowed to coach while
their teams prepare for and compete. In fact,
the coaches aren't even allowed in the room!
"These competitions are all student-driven,"
coach Garrison, now in his third year, said. "I
was in awe by what I saw. Our kids did an
amazing, excellent job."
While other members of the team stormed through
ideas to give their bot a brain, George sat down
with the bot itself, remembering that it held
the framework of the stolen program; not enough
to run the bot, but just the edge them team
could use to rewrite the remainder of the
program ... if there was a way to extract the
framework.
There was, and George figured it out, and with
his teammates fleshed out the framework into a
functioning program just in the nick of time.
Their bot didn't win a berth at state, but it
did, amazingly, take third, earning a robotics
trophy for the BCMS trophy case.
Also unlike most sports, robotics isn't just
robots. In addition to designing and programming
and testing and refining the bot, team members
must also consider real-world problems, select
one, and then and think of an "Innovative Real
World Solution."
This year, BCMS Omega team members considered
the human water cycle, how we get our water, use
it for various things from drinking and cooking
to washing clothes to flushing our waste away
for treatment.
While it seems there's an incredible amount of
water on our beautiful blue planet, there is
actually only a finite amount; the refreshingly
cold water molecules that that landed on your
tongue when you stopped for a quick sip at the
water fountain were the very same ones that
brontosaurs waded in and drank aeons ago, and
those joined atoms of H2O were ancient even
then.
What the BCMS Omega teams wrapped their
intellects around was the forms water takes. You
can't splash all forms of water on your face,
you can't drink it in all forms, you can't even
use all forms of it to put the cold in cold
drinks!
We are, they realized, surrounded by water all
the time -- water vapor. Visible as fog or the
mist on the mountains, the vast majority of
water vapor can't be seen or even felt. And yet,
in the atmosphere that envelopes the Earth,
there is an astounding 37.5 million billion
gallons of water, enough, if it all precipitated
out at once, to cover the entire surface of the
Earth, land and ocean, with one inch of rain.
With this insight, BCMS Omega Robotics did some
serious analysis and number crunching and
developed a fog catcher.
They took the concept from a broad idea to a
specific design in a specific place; the Seattle
Space Needle to be exact, and a special mesh
that could be draped about the edifice without
taking away from the landmark's utility to
collect fog -- water vapor -- collect it and
make it available to people for non-potable use;
for washing dishes, flushing toilets, washing
clothes.
When the numbers were crunched and all the
factors considered, their fog catcher could
yield a whopping 1,600 gallons on water for
human use per day, and with the added benefit of
delivering it without the need of pumping -- no
electricity or fuel required.
The Omega teams worked feverishly to develop a
display through which to convey their ideas. It
had to stand on its own -- none of the students
could be on hand to explain details or answer
questions. At the district competition in their
own halls, they won, but barely. While the idea
and the facts and figures were deemed worthy,
the display wasn't quite up to the desired
standard.
Instead of giving up, Omega athletes buckled
down, and in three weeks before the UofI
competition, they completely rethought and
rebuilt their display, and it was a marvel. It
easily won the northern Idaho competition, and
it was packed up and shipped to go one-on-one
with the winning southern Idaho entry, where it
was chosen to represent Idaho in the upcoming
global showdown in our nation's capitol.
While they don't have to accompany their "Real
World Solution" to Washington, up to five Omega
team members and two adults have been invited.
Coach Garrison has barely had time to assimilate
news of the opportunity, let alone figure out
what could make such an amazing dream come true,
but the one thing for certain is that it will
take money, and the robotics program is one that
is not funded by the school district. Everything
these students have accomplished by support from
the community.
While no one at BCMS or on the team is asking
for more help, it would seem a shame to deny the
small group such an amazing opportunity, and if
donations marked for BCMS Omega Robotics
Innovative Solutions were to suddenly begin
arriving at the BCMS office or turning up in the
BCMS mail, 6577 Main Street, Bonners Ferry ID
83805, staff would have little choice, for the
time being, anyway, but to hang on to them to
see if, perchance, such a trip is within the
realm of possibility. |
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