About 200 students, coaches and volunteers rolled into Keaau High School on Thursday for an intense VEX Robotics Competition called Startstruck — the first time the state championship has taken place on the Big Island.
About 200 students, coaches and volunteers rolled into Keaau High School on Thursday for an intense VEX Robotics Competition called Startstruck — the first time the state championship has taken place on the Big Island.
After a day of robotic rowdiness, Kohala High School qualified for the spring national championships in Louisville, Ky., the only Big Island team to advance.
“They were just cheering in appreciation,” said Art Kimura, a volunteer organizer and program director of the NASA-funded Hawaii Space Grant Consortium, shortly after the announcement was made.
Lilly Rosbrugh and Zoe Jones, freshmen at Hawaii Academy of Arts and Science in Pahoa, were the only two members of the team Girl Scout Troop 254.
Even though it was their first competition, the robot they built for the event nearly toppled opponent Keaau High School Cougar Tech Robotics.
The goal was to toss as many objects — in this case, orange squares and yellow stars — as possible across a partition and into the other team’s area, while that team’s robots tossed the objects back.
Essentially, it’s like creating a robot to clean your room while your siblings keep messing it up.
“If you have the cleanest room, you’re good to go,” said Serena O’Neill, coach of the Cougar team.
The Cougars, including freshman Jayden Sanoria and seniors Leah Warren and Lily Levya, prevailed.
They did so with a key accomplishment and earned extra points for how they finished the heat: by getting one of their robots to hang itself from the corner rail of the competition square.
That was just one match among dozens during the one-day tournament.
“You’ve got to do all the designing to make sure it does all the things you want it to do, at the rate you want it to do it,” O’Neill said. “It’s a very complex challenge.”
Prior to the competition, teams each received a robotics kit, and then designed and built their robots. In April, they’re told what the goals will be for the robots. Then, they’ll spend the summer strategizing, Kimura said.
“Robotics is a tool to teach teamwork, problem-solving, commitment, time management,” he said.
Society’s biggest interests, according to Kimura, are sports and entertainment. Young people consume movies, music, games and television.
“What robotics did is take advantage of those elements of entertainment and sports,” Kimura said.
The robotics competition comprises qualifying rounds, with music, bleachers, teams competing intensely, crowds watching, flashy competitive outfits and nail-biting close calls.
“It’s just grown enormously in the last few years,” Kimura said. In the past five years, “we have easily doubled the number of participants.”
Teachers volunteer their time as coaches, and it’s often parents or students who spur development of a new team when a school doesn’t have one.
“That’s been the biggest logjam, I think, for schools, is to have the teachers who have the energy,” Kimura said. “Scholastic robotics, as we call it, actually was born in Hilo.”
During the first planning meeting for what is now the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, a NASA astronomer, who oversaw NASA robotics grants offered in California, expanded the program to Hawaii.
Today, Kimura estimates 35 percent of Hawaii schools have one or more robotics programs.
“The Big Island was the birthplace of all of this,” he said. “It started with that chance meeting with that engineer.”
Kohala Middle School eighth-grader Hunter Perez and Kohala High School sophomore Joseph Pasco joined forces to coax their robot to a victory.
The hardest part, Pasco said, is “getting stuck on the fence.” But if that happens, he said, “you just keep on going.”
Similarly, Kimura said, the competition itself helps students succeed — and fail — with grace, helping them recognize repeated failure is part of the learning process on the path to success.
About 1,000 students participate in teams of three to 20 students each in the metal-robots category, with about 110 teams total. A separate plastic-robots category should have about 300 teams next year.
Six teams advanced to the national robotics championships in Louisville: Kohala High and Wailua, Pearl City (three teams) and Mililani High schools from Oahu.
This year’s state competition was moved because, Kimura said, “we felt it was unfair to the Neighbor Islands that they would always have to pay to travel.”
From now on, the state championship will rotate between islands.
Students, parents, teachers and volunteers interested in participating or starting a new program are asked to email Kimura at art@higp.hawaii.edu.
Email Jeff Hansel at jhansel@hawaiitribune-herald.com.