From Toys to Tech: Building Robots Brick by Brick
Armed with standard Lego sets, students in ele- mentary school on up are getting started toward careers in robotics, and CompTIA is there to help.
by Daniel Margolis S tudents at Robles Elementary School are given a box of standard parts called Lego Mindstorms. Their task is to build and program robots from their given pieces including motors, wheels, sensors and microprocessor via tablets and laptops with software downloaded from Lego. The students compete against other teams of Lego robotics programmers, first within the school, then all the way up to state, regional and national competitions.
But first, they just have fun with it. “They set the Lego down in its base and press go,” said Desh Bagley, a computer lab technician with Hillsborough Community College and the FIRST LEGO League Partner for the region. FIRST is a not-for-profit public charity designed to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. There are 95 FIRST LEGO teams in west Florida alone, so Bagley is organizing training, recruiting coaches, setting up events and working with parents across a 16-county radius. “Robots perform challenges for as many points as they can within a two-and-a-half- minute period, with a maximum of 465 points – though that’s very rare,” Bagley said. “Teams have to engineer the robots to approach tasks with the highest points. Some go for the highest
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CompTIAWorld | SPRING 2018
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