The Chattanooga Engineers Club has two primary civic service goals, education and industrial development. The “Education” goal has been previously concentrated on secondary and post-secondary education with support of programs in:
The Regional Science Fair (middle and high schools)
Support of CSTCC (two year and continuing programs)
Support of UTC (undergraduate and graduate programs)
Last year some associates at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory asked (challenged) the CEC to become involved in a relatively new statewide program, the First Lego League. This program, aimed at middle school students, uses the Lego Robotic products in a competitive setting to teach and develop skills in teamwork, strategy, programming, and problem solving. Participation in the 2002 Challenge was widely accepted, so we did it again this year.
The First Lego League (FLL) has been active in Tennessee for four years. The “Challenge” is a set of defined problems, used throughout the US and internationally, to be solved by a team of 4 to 10 students using identical problem structures (the stage and set) and a uniquely designed robot and programs (the actor and script). The 2003 Challenge theme was “Mission Mars”, robots in an environment based on the actual NASA missions to Mars, which will (hopefully) be successful in January, 2004.
Each team uses Lego plastic construction pieces to create the problem scenario on a 4-foot by 8-foot “work area” with a plastic surface supplied by the national organization, assuring identical placement and difficulty.
Each team then arrives at a “solution” for the problems involving:
Design and construction of a robot using the Lego “brick” (a robotic memory, power supply and control device) and standard Lego plastic construction components, motors, sensors, and accessories
Development of a strategy (as a team) to solve the problems (nine in 2003) within 150 seconds, earning as many points as possible for each problem successfully solved.
Creation, testing and “tweaking” (incremental improvement) of the programs and the features of the robot to improve the total score
Funding for the 2003 Challenge was received from four sources:
The Education Fund of the Chattanooga Engineers Club ($500)
The members of CEC (more than 100 hours of “advisor” time)
The Benwood foundation ($1000)
An anonymous fund in the Community Foundation ($500)
Doug Fisher of Hometown Threads ($150 in product)
This funding was used to purchase one complete set of Lego Robotic instructional material, three “work areas”, and reward material for participants (knit shirts). Schools that participated last year (Tyner and CSAS) used robots provided last year. One “new” school (Hunter) was completely equipped.
Fred Carr, Assistant Superintendent of the HCDE, supplied the school’s contacts and Ed Chapin, project coordinator for the CEC, contacted each of three schools and offered the program. Tyner Middle Academy (TMA) and Chattanooga School for Arts and Sciences (CSAS) agreed to participate for a second year. Hunter Middle School was a new participant. This year a “local” event was coordinated with the Challenger Center on the UTC campus. This has led to new possibilities for joint programs with the Challenger Center next year.
When the statewide competition was held in December at Cookeville, Tennessee at Tennessee Technological University, the TMA team sent nine students (one was ill and could not attend), a teacher and a support (family) crew to participate in a day-long competition which included three separate rounds of the robot on the work area, two technical interviews by the judges and advisors, and a presentation by the teams of the use of robots to explore the Martian surface. The CSAS and Hunter teams had not completed construction of a robot able to solve half of the problems (self-imposed goal) and did not make the trip to Cookeville.
In February, teams will participate in a “wrap up” display at the Creative Discovery Museum (CDM) during the Engineers Week exhibits. All three teams will (hopefully) show different robots, demonstrate robot construction and programming, and display the work area and problem solving process. The Tyner TYBOTS will also make their research presentation.
This year the Tyner TYBOTS won a First Place trophy in Research Presentation and a Second Place trophy in Teamwork. This was extraordinary for a school competing against forty of the finest schools in the state of Tennessee. They placed seventh in the field of forty when the robot construction, programming and performance were included.
The CEC is committed to sponsoring another year of funding and advising.
The 2004 Challenge will be announced during May of next year, with materials available during the summer.
The “Lego Robot” project has made a considerable impact on the local community and allowed us to provide a very challenging program to local students.
The project has also permitted many adults to become personally involved in the local education systems, increasing awareness of fiscal and temporal pressures on students, teachers, parents and interested sponsors.
In short, IT WAS GREAT and we enjoyed every minute of our “Trip to Mars”.
Ed Chapin, 2002-2003 CEC Lego Robot Coordinator