ROBOTS EARN RECOGNITION FOR MONROE, GRANADA HILLS.

Byline: Mark Kellam

valleynews.com

Robotics is a big part of our lives, with some experts believing thinking robots may one day care for children and the elderly -- and help police our streets.

Students from two high schools in the San Fernando Valley demonstrated recently that they may some day play a big role in the future of robotics.

Monroe High School took first place in a regional robotics championship held at California State University, Northridge, last month. The students now advance to a national competition in Atlanta on April 17-19.

Students from Granada Hills Charter High School reached the semifinals in the contest at CSUN and won the Think Award for their impressive documentation of their project in an engineering notebook.

Both teams competed against about 40 other schools, several of them from the San Fernando Valley, in a game called Quad Quandary, in which robots placed rings on goal posts to earn points.

Then, for extra points, teams could have their robots move the posts into designated quadrants on the playing field.

The regional and national competitions are sponsored by an organization called For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. Even though FIRST's contest in Atlanta is called a national competition, schools from around the world compete, said Lewis Chappelear, coach of the Monroe High robotics team.

The Monroe team, called the Robotroopers, won the regional competition with a robot that was smaller than most of its competitors.

Monroe's robot was 12 inches by 12 inches, but robots could be up to 18-inch cubes.

Chappelear, who was named a 2008 California Teacher of the Year in November and is now one of four finalists to be National Teacher of the Year, said he knew it would be a busy year for him, so he told his robotics team members they should keep their robot simple and just have fun.

Keeping it simple has always been Chappelear's motto when it comes to robotics, but this year was more streamlined than usual.

But it worked.

Because Monroe's robot was smaller, it could make strong defensive moves, blocking the other robots from doing their tasks on the field, said Chappelear, who has been coaching the Monroe robotics team for five years.

This is the first year his team has won the FIRST regional contest.

Granada Hills High won the regional robotics contest last year. Even though his team didn't win, coach Joseph Vanderway said he was pleased with the performance of this year's team, called Robodox.

"I'm very proud of the team and all the volunteers who chipped in to support this fantastic event," said Vanderway, who has been coaching the Granada Hills team since 2000.

Granada Hills High has provided volunteer support for the regional FIRST competition the past two years. Several volunteers also came from the High Tech High in San Diego.