The local students chose to compete in the land portion of the challenge. The goal was to create an autonomous vehicle that could locate and deliver payloads to specific drop locations. During the competition, students maneuvered a robot around obstacles while locating cubes of different sizes and weights. The catch, students could only look through a video screen, the cubes were delivered to designated drop points. Operators could not look directly at the robot during operations.

Students met before school, after school, and on their lunch breaks beginning in January. The STEM Club engineered and built their unique land robot with guidance from Mr. Jason Brown, a software engineer, and parent volunteer. Fred Hoy, drafting and design teacher at Central Mountain High School, and Marcie Walizer, STEM Club advisor and science teacher also assisted the students through the entire process. “These students worked on their own time” said Walizer “this required dedication and sacrifice and I am very proud of them” she added. CMHS science teacher Sue Hanna also helped guide the students during the project.

The process of building the robot taught students how to follow a timeline, keep track of their progress, budget, plan meetings, problem solve, and overcome obstacles.

Many problems required the group to stop and contemplate a solution. As Mr. Brown noted, “Perhaps the most important take away from the whole experience should be we learn more from our failures than our successes. Every time we had to solve a problem we learned something and we solved a boat load of problems.”

KCSD PHOTO CMHS STEM Club students Micah Schall, Chris Lavallee, Anna Betar, Lance Bowman, Gianna Renzo, and Brian Taylor pose with faculty advisors Fred Hoy, Marcie Walizer, and Jason Brown.

The project was supported by First Quality Tissue who generously donated $350. The contribution was used to purchase materials needed to create the robot.