LEGO ROBOTS GO INTO BATTLE MIDDLE SCHOOLERS BUILD COMPUTER-PROGRAMMED MODELS.Byline: KAREN MAESHIRO Staff Writer LANCASTER -- Lancaster High School's robotics robotics, science and technology of general purpose, programmable machine systems. Contrary to the popular fiction image of robots as ambulatory machines of human appearance capable of performing almost any task, most robotic systems are anchored to fixed positions team will host the Antelope Valley's first Lego robot tournament today for local middle school students. The competition will feature computer-programmed robots built with the plastic building blocks by 13 teams of students from Cole, Desert Christian, Endeavour, Park View, Sacred Heart The Sacred Heart is a religious devotion to Jesus' physical heart as the representation of the divine love for humanity This devotion is predominantly used in the Roman Catholic Church and also used in the Anglican Church. and Tehachapi schools, as well as two Girl Scout troops. ``They provide you with kits, a diagram, software and Legos in order to build a robot with a computer and also different pieces made of Legos,'' said Cathy Schuster, co-principal and language arts language arts pl.n. The subjects, including reading, spelling, and composition, aimed at developing reading and writing skills, usually taught in elementary and secondary school. teacher at Sacred Heart School Sacred Heart School may refer to one of these schools: In the United States
The competition starts at 9a.m. in Lancaster High's small gym. The teams had about two months to build their robots, which can be no bigger than a 16-inch cube cube, in geometry, regular solid bounded by six equal squares. All adjacent faces of a cube are perpendicular to each other; any one face of a cube may be its base. The dimensions of a cube are the lengths of the three edges which meet at any vertex. but can have extending arms or other parts. The robot-building kits came with 1,300 pieces of Legos. ``Ours has three motors, claws and a plow plow or plough, agricultural implement used to cut furrows in and turn up the soil, preparing it for planting. The plow is generally considered the most important tillage tool. ,'' said Lancaster High senior Nicholas Hayes, a Sacred Heart alumnus ALUMNUS, civil law. A child which one has nursed; a foster child. Dig. 40, 2, 14. who volunteered to be Sacred Heart's team advisor. And the robots have sensors that ``make it more capable and more aware of their surroundings,'' Hayes said. Hayes approached Sacred Heart to start a team because he wished something like that had been available to him in middle school. Teams score points based on missions they complete using the robot, such as one where the robots push a toy truck up a ramp and raise the truck using a lift, Hayes said. The students had to calculate the rotation of the wheels to go a certain distance, how many rotations were needed to go 2feet, and the angle or degree of turn to move the robot around, Schuster said. The robot's computer is programmed to perform functions at the push of a button, she said. karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com (661) 267-5744 CAPTION(S): photo Photo: A Sacred Heart School student gets the school's computer-programmed Lego robot ready for a demonstration on Friday. Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer |
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