Cherry Hill East shines in robotics design
A big buzzword in education these days is STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Add an F for "fun" to those letters and you have an acronym that's tough to pronounce. But you also have the essence of the VEX robotics tournament that unfolded Sunday at Cherry Hill High School East.
A big buzzword in education these days is STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
Add an F for "fun" to those letters and you have an acronym that's tough to pronounce. But you also have the essence of the VEX robotics tournament that unfolded Sunday at Cherry Hill High School East.
Forty-six of New Jersey's 120 high school VEX robotics teams faced off in the state championship at the school on Kresson Road, vying for a chance to go to the World competition in Lexington, Ky., in April.
Each team lugged in an 18-inch tall, whirring, ka-chunking, ball-throwing robot, designed and built during the school year.
The gizmos looked like high-tech erector sets tricked out with motors, compressors, and computer controls. Their mechanized task: scoop up and throw balls into assigned nets, which is why this year's contest was called "Nothing but Net."
The task was harder than it sounds.
"Our biggest challenge was to get the robot to throw more consistently," said junior Kevin Bavitz of the Galactic Gorillas, one of six robotics teams from Cherry Hill East in the tournament.
"A lot of computer programming goes into making the ball go into the net," explained Kevin's brother Keith, looking at the Gorillas' prodigious programmer, Huy Vo, who hopes to use his skill professionally.
Said their club adviser Joe Dilks, a lawyer turned math teacher: "Robotics combines all the [STEM] disciplines. It's eminently useful."
Several companies market educational robotics systems, but VEX, a subsidiary of Innovation First International Inc., claims to be the fastest growing, with 15,000 teams from 30 countries participating annually in 1,000 competitions such as the one at Cherry Hill East.
Dilks attributed its popularity to the relatively affordable costs. Each robot's reusable parts cost about $2,000; Cherry Hill East's six-year-old club has built a parts stockpile worth $30,000.
Sunday's competition was a bit like a four-ring circus.
Four fields - each with a 12-foot-square rubber mat surrounded by a low fence - were set up in the gym for the two-minute-long qualifying matches. Despite the fences, a steady stream of foam balls that missed the nets flew at the legs of fans in the bleachers.
For awhile, it seemed as though the Gorillas' robot, with a flywheel ball-thrower, was a true contender. By early afternoon, with four of nine matches completed, the Gorillas were ranked near the top, along with teams from perennial powerhouse Ranney High School in Tinton Falls, N.J.
Alas, as the matches ended around 5:30 p.m., none of Cherry Hill East's six teams made the cut.
But then came the coveted design award, given to the team with the best notebook documenting the season-long evolution of its robot. The winner - Cherry Hill East's Frightening Lightning - will go to the Worlds.
"Competition is exploding, and it's getting tougher," Dilks said. "That's good for the kids and good for robotics."
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