Six Bay Area participants in the California Zero Robotics Summer Program for middle school kids celebrated their newly acquired engineering knowledge at the program’s “FinalDay” on Aug. 15 at Moffett Field, and the fact that their teams had lost in the first round of the competition didn’t diminish their enthusiasm.
The event took place at NASA Ames, and marked the finale of the second year California has participated in the national Zero Robotics summer program, according to NASA Ames Research Center officials. The program was coordinated by the California Afterschool Network.
Program organizers said that the five-week program taught 50 middle schoolers computer engineering skills. Participants included students from under-served schools, and members of the Boys and Girls Club Ernest Ingold Clubhouse, and the Buchanan YMCA of San Francisco, and the YMCA of Mt. Madonna in Morgan Hill.
Jeff Davis, a California Afterschool Network program director, said that the relatively low attendance for the final competition day resulted primarily from the fact that school had started for many of the participants.
Organizers hoped that the program and competition encouraged the middle schoolers to acquire a greater interest in science, technology, mathematics and engineering as well as a belief that they could become engineers in the future.
The final competition involved entering code programmed by the middle schoolers into a Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellite (SPHERES) — a volleyball-size flying robot — located inside the Japanese Space Module in the International Space Station, according to NASA officials.
The code was entered from there into a computer simulation, in which virtual SPHERES were programmed to direct a comet away from Earth, they said. The teams that directed the comet the farthest away from Earth through programming earned the highest scores in the competition. The program participants and organizers watched the competition progress on the International Space Station through a live video feed.
Although NASA hosted a field trip day for program participants early in the program, NASA officials said they could not provide any help or tips to the students for the competition. They said NASA provided training in programming to instructors with the Boys and Girls Club and YCMA, who then trained their students to code.
Davis said that during the fourth week of the program, a regional competition was held between the three teams to determine which code was the highest quality. The Boys and Girls Club Ernest Ingold clubhouse won that competition, with the Buchanan YMCA reaching second place. He said that during the final week of the program, all three teams were given access to the winning code and collaborated virtually to improve it for the national competition.
Despite the three sites’ collaborative efforts, California did not make it past the initial round of the competition. Davis said that collaborating virtually presented a challenge and an excellent learning opportunity to the program participants.
“What that tells you is that real scientists and real engineers have to be collaborative,” he said.
Davis said that the effort still marked as an improvement from how the California team competed last year. Only one site participated in the program, and the code was deemed insufficient for the national competition, he said.
The day’s festivities didn’t end with the competition. Afterwards, Davis led outdoor activities, a Jeopardy game testing students on information they learned during the program and an awards ceremony that granted certificates to the program participants and plaques to the Boys and Girls Club and YMCA Buchanan.
NASA officials also let participants try on an astronaut suit and explained more to them about how SPHERES work.
Many of the middle schoolers said they hope to continue participating in high school robotics competitions. Zero Robotics has held a competition for high school students for the past six years, according to NASA aerospace intern Sean Christensen.
The program “taught me a lot with how to deal with failure,” said Jonathan, a 13-year-old Buchanan YMCA participant.
Middle school students representing nine states participated in the nationwide competition, which the Maryland/DC team eventually won, according to the tournament website.
The Zero Robotics national program and competition is run in partnership by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NASA, and other organizations. For more information about Zero Robotics, visit zerorobotics.mit.edu.
