Students compete in annual Junior Robotics Competition

The well-lit gymnasium was buzzing with the chatter of many elementary school students and their families, faculty and coaches. Tables were laden with makeshift “moon bases,” cameras were live streaming the event, with refreshments on the other side of the building. 

With many Lawton schools in the district competing in the annual Junior Robotics Competition on Friday at the Life Ready Center, 702 NW Homestead Drive, it was bound to be an “out of this world” experience. 

Doris Biegler, STEM Coordinator and Technical Trainer at LPS, said they had 130 students participating, third through fifth grade, with every elementary school in the district having a team. 

“This year our theme is space,” Biegler said. “It kind of goes along with the solar eclipse and things that are going on with NASA.”

Biegler said the competition is for elementary school students to learn how to build, engineer, design and code program robots.

Biegler said there were four different competitions. The first was the Engineering Design Notebook, where students plan, design and create their robot. The second competition is the Creative Robot, where they used their creative ability to make them as cool as they want. The third competition was the Coding Robot, where they would get a challenge and start building a code on their iPad or computer and will be charged to use the code for the competition. The last competition is the Driving competition, where they use the robot that they built and use controllers to wirelessly drive it to complete the task.

“They have a Moon base and their Rover is their robot,” Biegler said. “They have to go and collect the pieces of their tool, bring it back to their astronaut who will have astronaut gloves on and will have to build that tool to plan to get all of the points. They’re also collecting rocks and samples on the Moon to get other points.”

Promyse Thrash, a fifth-grader at Pioneer Park Elementary, said her team competed in the Creative Robot competition. She and her teammate made a robot out of papier mache, with a school spirit theme.

“That was the first time I ever made it,” Thrash said. “The robot drives with the controller and you can put the pioneer head on.”

Kinsley Abraham, a fourth-grader at Freedom Elementary, said this is her second year competing. 

“So far, all we’ve done is driving, next is coding and we also built a bot for the design one,” Abraham said.

Abraham said she got inspiration for her robot by looking at other robots.

“We just looked at others,” Abraham said. “I thought of some of them last year, and then we found one that is perfect for coding and driving. We got a base bot and just built on. Our first robot has a grabber, so it can pick up the pieces easier. That’s what got us most of our blocks. It’s also really useful for coding because it can scoop up pieces.”

Abraham said she learned how to share with other people’s ideas while building their robot.

Abraham said she enjoys the driving competition because “it’s the best part.”

Ethan Nguyen, a fifth-grader also from Freedom Elementary, said this is his third year competing. He said he likes that “you get to build your own robots and get to compete against other people.”

Nguyen said he got his inspiration from an official website that gives instructions on how to build robots.

“Some people like to modify the robots by adding stuff,” Nguyen said. “(I learned) how motors work and how to make certain shapes with parts.”

Nguyen said his robot is designed to push certain shapes into an area for someone else to build them into something.

Biegler thinks one of the things the students are learning is teamwork.

“A lot of jobs and careers, that’s like the number one thing,” Biegler said. “You can train somebody to do something, but you can’t train them to get along with others and be a team player.”

“Most people are trying to work together,” Thrash said. “It’s just an activity to do with friends and stuff.”

“The goal of the event is to teach some lifelong skills that will help them as they move on to different careers,” Biegler said. “So when they go to middle school and high school, they’ve already got this background knowledge of engineering, designing and computer programming. That will help them design and do a lot more of their stuff.”