Robotics Team Gets Its Funding

The Fastenators, the Montville High School robotics team that came in second in the state competition recently, has, this morning, received enough money in donations to fund its trip to the next round of competition.

The team's win at the Connecticut competition surprised everyone, including the team members themselves. Suddenly, with only a couple weeks between competitions, the Fastenators had to find a way to get to Auburn, AL.

Each student put in $100 toward tickets. The team had $1,500; but $4,000 remained.

Doug Couture, the teacher mentoring the robotics team, wrote letters to the Mohegan Tribe. He wrote to Montville businesses. He went to the Town Council.

Nothing.

This morning, however, enough donations came in to make up the gap the team needed to bridge to get to the competition.  

Couture said donations came "from other MHS school organizations, businesses in town, and also the College of Technology (Connecticut Community College System)."

He adds that the team is still looking for sponsors to help pay for materials for other competitions.

Impassioned students, energized

There's excitement in the tech room at Montville High, even before the funding shows up. It's Tuesday evening, and a group of students is gathered around a table, talking and laughing, focused and intense.

One is reaching for a piece of plastic tubing. Another is cutting a belt around a bunch of wires. Another is fiddling with a wheel, and it is clear that they're happy, and engaged and filled with the fire of learning and creating.

This is the robotics team, a group of inspired youngsters, who surprised everyone – including, it seems, itself – by coming in second in the state robotics championship recently at Central Connecticut State University.

They've learned about teamwork. They've learned about collaboration. They've learned about programming and design and mechanics and logic. And now, they're learning about life.

Three of the students attended the meeting in which Couture asked the Montville Town Council for help.

The council wanted to help the team. Council members were proud of the kids, and proud of the win. But, as Candy Buebendorf said at the meeting, the council was arguing over $50 line items during the most recent budget; how, in good conscience, could the council advance the money to the team, at this time?

Team members who were there said they were upset and disappointed, though they understood.

The team continued to work. And its members continued to hope for help.

This morning, the work and the hope paid off.

The competition

The challenge – it's the same for all the teams – is to design a robot that can select certain items over others, and place them in a particular spot, in a particular manner. The robot could be used in the packaging process, for picking out defective items, for instance.

One of the challenges is for the robot to go to a certain place on the course, pick up a small orange cone, bring it to a different spot in the course, turn it upside down and insert it in an opening in a shelf.

Then the robot travels to a grid where plastic Easter eggs are stored. Some have magnets inside them and some don't. The robot figures out which are which, then picks the ones without the magnets, carries them to the upside-down cone and drops them in. In the final stage, the robot picks up a plastic disc, turns it upside down and places it on top of the cone. The operations must be completed within three minutes, and the team is judged on quantity.

The robot is operated by a handheld Bluetooth device, programmed by Peter Lam. Other team members can operate the robot (Gary is his name), and, in fact, must do so during the competition.

Lam is the team's lone programmer. He programmed Gary, and then he streamlined the program, cutting it from 246 lines to 60 lines. His enthusiasm is contagious.

Michaela Sampson, another senior, is the artist. She designed the team's T-shirts and its logo, starting with freehand drawings and moving the work to the computer, using paint.net and Photoshop.

Stephanie Jaskiewicz, who says she is indeed related to Montville Mayor Joe Jaskiewicz, is a freshman. She helped build the robot.

Ying Yi Chen is working to learn programming. Dillon Babcock works on the robot's wiring. Kyle Stepanian practices operating the robot, while Zaria Margolis, Jake Ouellette and Tyler Richards tinker with wheels and piping and pieces.

The team has redesigned the robot, after watching other teams' robots at the Connecticut finals. The wheels are bigger now, so the machine is faster.

They're learning. They're growing.

And they're going to compete.

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To donate to the cause, or to become a sponsor, see faculty.montvilleschools.org/dcouture. And stay tuned to the Montville Patch for more stories from Monday's town council meeting.