Tewksbury Kids at UML Botfest

Two students from Tewksbury were participants in the New England Regional Botball/Botfest at UMass Lowell on March 24, 2012.

Robert Pothier, a sixth grader at the John F. Ryan School co-exhibited with Noah Hanf of Billerica. The boys exhibited Nyam, a robot that could eat, made with the Lego Mindstorms product.

The robot had a neck and swallowed small wooden blocks and plastic aliens.This is the fourth year Pothier has participated. Tewksbury fifth grader Noah Beckman exhibited his MORPH (Martian Observing Robot and Personal Humanoid) constructed from Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 from a design by Kirk Backstron. The robot could sing, dance and transform based on different colored balls waved in front of its sensor.

Beckman attends Abundant Life Christian School in Wilmington and is a first year exhibitor. Students from nearby towns such as Chelmsford, North Andover and North Reading also exhibited robots. The concurrent Botball Tournament, a competition pitting robots against each other on a skills course, featured teams from Innovation Academy in Tyngsboro, Greater Lowell Technical High School, Chelmsford High, Malden Catholic and others.

Tewksbury High School has participated in past years but was not at this event. The tournament is part of a robotics and STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education initiative, started by the KISS Institute of Practical Robotics (www.kipr.org) designed to encourage students to creatively use their science and math skills. Team results are posted at www.botball.org.