Robotics Mixes Science With Creativity
Beside a pond across from Grant’s Kate Duncan Smith DAR School campus, 8 students gathered after class to launch a bright yellow Lego buoy. But this outing wasn’t just for fun. These middle schoolers were testing out Hitch Boat, an information-gathering robot they made together.
The students equipped their buoy to collect and evaluate water samples using sensors for testing pH, temperature and other water-quality indicators. They spent weeks creating and programming the floating robot, an innovation research project in line with the ocean theme of the 2024 and 2025 FIRST Lego League robotics competitions.
FLL is the robotics program of For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST). FIRST was created in 1989 by Dean Kamen, who later invented the Segway. FLL competitors use Lego parts and blocks-based programming, a simple interface of stacked commands.
The group’s higher-level programs are the FIRST Tech Challenge and the FIRST Robotics Competition, which was the inaugural FIRST event in 1992. To cover the cost of participating in FIRST contests and purchasing equipment, most teams hold fundraisers and collect sponsorships.
Hitch Boat finished 12th among the 57 FLL competitors from across Alabama at the Dec. 7 contest, hosted by Hampton Cove Middle School. It’s just 1 of the projects the DAR Middle School Robotics Team works on during the school year, under the guidance of teacher Jessica Putman and volunteer mentor David Barr, a retired engineer who has coached robotics teams for more than 20 years. While Hitch Boat did not qualify for FLL’s Feb. 1 state final, the DAR team still had a champion — they nominated Barr for the Coach/Mentor Award, and he won.
Programmed For Success
Robotics projects in area schools have won many awards over the years, but competitions are not the only measure of success. Gus Hembree, STEM coordinator for the Kevin Dukes Career & Innovation Academy, says the most rewarding aspect is being able “to watch these kids use actual communication skills and problem-solving” to make and program the robots. “You can just see the gears turn in their heads,” he says.
Hembree was retired from teaching but when asked to head the career academy’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Math effort, he readily agreed. “It was a big enough deal that I came out of retirement to do it,” he says. “That’s how much I thought of the program.” Before his retirement, he spent many years at Pisgah High School, where he taught chemistry, physics and robotics, which he introduced to PHS in 2013. The robotics class received equipment kits at no cost from Northeast Alabama Community College and support from the office of its then-dean of workforce development, Mike Kennamer.
That November, the Pisgah High robotics team entered its first contest, the Boosting Engineering Science and Technology Robotics competition, also known as BEST, which NACC began hosting in 2012. Founded in 1993, the BEST Robotics competition is free to enter and, rather than using kits, it supplies teams with a random set of parts to make into a robot.
Some schools stopped offering robotics classes when the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the normal routine, while others — like DAR School, which began its robotics program in 2015 — continued to meet and compete via Zoom. At the Kevin Dukes academy, Hembree leads weeklong robotics STEM programs in the summer, which are free to students and so popular that spots fill up quickly.
Hembree stresses students have benefited from schools introducing them to computer programming in 7th and even 6th grade. “When we did our robotics STEM last summer, I had a lot of kids who were able to come in and do some pretty remarkable things with the robots they had because they already understood the basic logic of programming,” he says. “There were a couple of groups that I struggled in challenging. It didn’t matter what I gave them, they could figure it out.”
The benefits of robotics can go far beyond an award or a grade. Barr, who also assists with the Skyline High School robotics program, says he’s coached students who have gone on to prestigious colleges and careers in fields from technology to medicine. And Hembree points out robotics can build knowledge, creativity and problem-solving that can help students excel in many areas of life.
“On the last day of last summer’s second session, while we were on lunch break, the county did a hard reset on all the Chromebooks, where the kids had all these programs they’d completed,” Hembree says. “They lost about 90% capacity, but they had the ability to adapt and overcome.”