Five Years, Thousands of Students, Hundreds of Robots and One Southern
Maryland World Championship Team
When College of Southern Maryland Chair of Technical Studies Department
Judy Thomason applied for a National Science Foundation Grant to help
CSM develop community interest in science, technology, engineering and
math (STEM) fields in 2006, she had no idea how far her idea would
go—but she had high hopes. It turned out that Thomason’s early
efforts in Southern Maryland have spread, not only across the state, but
also across the Atlantic, have sent teams to world championships and
have brought championship trophies back home to Southern Maryland.
Although she is now retired from CSM, Thomason is still passionate
about robotics and volunteers at the college’s competitions. “This
program has exceeded my expectations,” Thomason said, adding that the
success of the program has been the outpouring of volunteers from not
only CSM but businesses and the community.
In the five years that CSM has hosted robotics competitions, thousands
of students and hundreds of robots have zoomed around the Physical
Education (PE) Building’s gym floor, while hundreds of CSM staff and
student volunteers along with dozens of corporate sponsors, community
organizations and elected officials have provided support.
And, CSM’s competitions have become a model for other regions. In the
December 2010 FTC competition, a team from Aviano, Italy, comprised of
U.S. Department of Defense dependents whose parents are stationed
abroad, visited to compete and to learn how to bring a competition such
as this to Europe for American students to qualify for World
Championships.
For people who have not been following the robotics craze, there are
two nationally sanctioned robotics competitions: FIRST Technology
Championship and VEX. Both use specialized robotics kits with some parts
that can be shared between platforms. The competitions are held on a
standard playing field with components added each year specific to the
competition. For instance, the game “Hot Shot” played at CSM’s
2009 Maryland FIRST Championship qualifier, required robots to open a
chute holding whiffle-ball sized balls, to gather and store balls on the
robot itself and to launch the balls into containers inside and outside
the field of play. To do this, the robots had to be designed with moving
parts, arms that might scoop up balls or work as pincers. The robots
need to turn in every direction, move forward and in reverse, drive up a
ramp and sometimes balance on a teetering board.
“If you’ve watched video of the Mars rover or a bomb
disposing-robot then you get the idea of the types of maneuvers these
machines have to perform, often from remote locations where the driver
is watching from a computer monitor,” said CSM Business and Technology
Division Chair Robert Gates, who is heading the planning for the
college’s robotics competitions.
“This is not like opening a remote-controlled toy on Christmas
morning adding a few batteries and off you go,” said Gates. “Months
before a competition, teams receive a box of parts including a motor.
They then have to put the pieces together in a way that makes sense for
the game they will be playing. They have to attach wires to each
mechanized piece that will relay instructions from an onboard computer
that is getting signals from the student driver’s hand-held
controller.”
Each team has to have at least one programmer who will write the code
that make the robot come ali
