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ROBOTICS ROBOTICS

arigato
domo

mr
roboto
Matt Wilce reports on
T
wo robots are gently lowered into two adjacent corners of
the competition ring—a square area divided by a central
wall—by the students who built them. Facing them on
the day that robots took the other side of the wall are two similar-looking robots. The
students step back and on a signal the four robots spring into

over the Ricketson Theater
for Japan’s first VEX
autonomous action following pre-programmed directions for
20 frenetic seconds. Some career into the central partition
successfully knocking miniature rugby balls off their stands into
the opposition’s side. Others sweep smaller plastic balls through
a gap at the bottom of the wall. Then as suddenly as they

Robotics Competition. started, they freeze. The teams, working in pairs against each
other, assess the state of play as they take up their controllers
and begin a further two minutes of gladiatorial battling in their
attempt to propel as many balls as possible to the other side.
Some use rotating plastic strips to sweep up smaller balls into a
hopper with the aim of dumping them over the wall. One of the
ASIJ robots employs an elegant arm that grabs the fallen rugby
balls and deftly drops them over. At the end of the two minutes
the judges tally the scores, counting the balls and noting who
got the large white bonus ball into their opponents’ court. ASIJ’s
first game of Clean Sweep is over and the first VEX Robotics
Competition to be held in Japan has really kicked off.

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Fantastic Voyage
Teams from California, Hawaii, Texas and Kyoto brought
their bots to ASIJ to compete in an exciting full-day tournament.
Observers from Kinnick, Yokota and St. Maur joined the audience
to watch as ASIJ hosted and competed for the first time in what
was the culmination of chemistry teacher Don Chamber’s year-
long work to expand the robotics program at school.
Chamber’s inspiration for developing the program came in
part from hearing about the work of alum George Stern ’04. In an
email “George described the robotics project he is working on at
Johns Hopkins University. He is in the department of biomedical
engineering and the team he is working on developed a tiny
hand-like ‘gripper’ which, when injected into the circulatory
system, can remove clots from arteries or take samples of tissue
for biopsy. It is a real life version of that old movie Fantastic
Voyage.” Following that Chambers attended a conference where 2
Steven Buchman lectured on the subject of insect photography
where he spoke about the difficulty in sneaking up on a frog
or a dragonfly, which has wrap around vision. “I sat back for a
moment and pondered the scene. Suddenly it struck me, bang,
what a great application for robotics! Photographs that robots
can take, that would be very difficult, if not impossible to take
otherwise. What a great theme for a contest. What a great
educational challenge to young people,” says Chambers.
“The world is poised for a second wave of the technological
revolution. A big part of that revolution will be in robotics,” he
continues. “If the first International Symposium On Robotics in
Science and Technology Education held in Yokohama in October,
2009 is any indication, China, Russia, the Middle East, as well
as Europe, all of South East Asia, and India have all invested
significant resources into developing robotics in education. In
fact, the Japanese Monbukagakusho (Department of Education) 3

recently declared that, within three years all Japanese middle

schools will include robotics as a required part of the curriculum.
1. Helen White and Ayaka Doyle work on the mandible-like grabber on one ASIJ’s
We know that what is developed in middle school moves on to
robots. 2.Sam Callon, Joe Cho and Jon Tollefson tinker with their robot. 3. Marisa
high school and from there to all of society at large.” 4
Luck’09 and Skyler Adams join the Robotics Club’s aquabots in the pool for a test dive.
4. Alex Kahl poses with one of new HPI G-Robots dogs that the school was asked to
beta-test. ASIJ was one of only 10 high schools and universities to take part in the
evaluation of the new robot.
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ROBOTICS

Batteries Not Included

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8 echoed that sentiment in an article about the seminar published in Robot Magazine,
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5. Sam Callon takes his competition robot for a final test
drive. 6. Joe Cho works on his robot’s faulty arm. 7. Chas
Forelle, Charlotte Lee and Sujoy Bhattacharyya practice
before the competition. 8. Alex Ariga poses with his
5 to help others.”
robot. 9. Sam and Joe take their robot for inspection. 10.
Nancy McIntyre with ASIJ faculty Mike Moody and Glen
Hoskins during her workshop. 11. One of the visiting
teams tweaks their machine.
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With these ideas in mind, as well as a good deal of enthusiasm from students
in the high school’s robotics club, Chambers worked to build a robotics program at
the American School in Japan. The first step was a PTA grant. He observes, “The
grant proposal process was really my first lesson in team building in relation to
robots. Team building is an integral part of robotics. If the proposal comes from the
students themselves, parents, administrators and corporate sponsors are better able
to understand that this subject will really interest and engage them. Team building is
largely recognizing individual skills. I had noticed that we have a particularly articulate
and talented writer in the group, Andrew Irvine ‘10. Andrew and I kicked around ideas
to present to the PTA and Andrew did a fantastic job writing it up. The PTA generously
supported the idea and we were able to get underway. We bought a lot of different
materials, VEX, ROV materials, Robodesigner kits and we attended robot school at RT
Corporation in Akihabara. We really jumped into the deep end.”
Help was on hand when Nancy McIntyre, Project Director of Eagle Engineering
at Chaminade College Preparatory School and VEX Robotics expert, visited ASIJ in
the spring to help launch the program. Her three-day workshop introduced the key
concepts of the VEX program and competition and got faculty and students started
on building working robots. Within the space of a few days the high school science
classrooms and corridor were invaded by prototypes being tested by enthusiastic
drivers. Despite all the fun to be had building the robots, McIntyre was also an
advocate for the educational impact of a robotics program. “We need to produce
more engineers and young people who can work together and solve problems and
robotics teams provide students with hands on experience that takes the content that
is learned in the classroom and uses it on the playing fields,” she says. Chambers
saying “We believe that this will be a powerful way to encourage science, technology,
engineering and math (STEM) as wells as community involvement at ASIJ.”
Learning how to build robots was only part of the program though as the school
also had to learn how to compete in its first competition as well as figure out how
to host one. Through connections with other schools in the States with established
programs ASIJ joined a vibrant and collaborative community of robotics enthusiasts
who shared their experience.
“Although scholastic robotics is played like a sporting event with mechanical
devices, one glaring difference is that robotics emphasizes collaboration and sharing.
In FIRST Robotics, this is referred to as ‘gracious professionalism.’ In programs like VEX
where you play each match with another team, this sharing of ideas and collaboration
is critical as your opponent in one match could become your alliance partner in the
next,” says Art Kimura of the Hawaii Space Grant Consortium, who joined the visiting
Hawaiian teams at ASIJ. “We have been to many robotics tournaments where teams
are sharing parts, tools and even their programming, often sending their team members
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Game On
The collaborative element of the VEX Competition soon became
evident on the day as the 13 teams from different schools worked
together in alliances against each other. ASIJ’s four teams also
found themselves helping each other as they tweaked robots
and the computer programs they’d written to control them
throughout the day. “In our first game, the robot was not able 12
to exit autonomous mode because our arm got stuck on the
wall. The program was designed to bring the arm down until
it hit a sensor in the middle of the robot, but since the arm 13
never came down, the program just kept on waiting for the arm
to come down, as the arm control motors kept on spinning,
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wearing down the axle connections and the motors themselves.
Not a pretty sight!” Alex Kahl ’10 wrote on his blog.
Once their teething troubles were fixed, ASIJ’s teams put in a
strong showing with Alex Ariga ’10 and Sho Sundberg ’10 spending 18
most of the qualifying round near the top of the leader board.
Despite being rookies, ASIJ’s other teams also performed well with
two teams making it all the way to the finals after they saw off
many of the more experienced teams during the quarter and semi-
finals. With two teams through to the final it was natural that the
ASIJ robots would pair up to make an alliance to take on two rivals
from Waialua High School. Charlotte Lee ‘10, Chas Forelle ‘10 and
Sujoy Bhattacharyya ’10 joined forces with classmates Alex Kahl
’10 and Jeffrey Nelson ‘10. The final match was a dramatic test of
both school’s machines and nerve as the controllers worked hard 14
to score points against each other. After two-minutes of intense
activity, ASIJ prevailed to the delight of the home crowd and ASIJ
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walked off with both teams as tournament champions. Things
got even better when the awards were presented and Charlotte,
Chas and Sujoy were present with the Excellence Award as well.
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Their win qualifies both teams to go to the World Championship
Competition in Dallas, TX.
The competition focused the interest of many throughout the
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school with a kindergarten teacher enquiring about presenting a
unit on robotics to her class and middle school teachers wanting
to start a program there. Going forward, talk has already begun
about next year’s competition and as our robotics program 16

continues to grow so too will its impact. “We need to get

teachers to think about robotic solutions to real world problems
in order to see the vision of robotics as another phase of the
technological revolution,” says Chambers. “They need to see
that thinking of robotic solutions is thinking out of the box, and
that through programs like this our young students have been
prepared in many ways to do just that.” •

Photos by Francine Flora, Yoshitaka Saji 12. Ritsumeikan and Waiakea work together. 13. One 9
of the robots is put into position on the field. 14-17.
and Lem Fugitt | robots-dreams.com
Scenes of the competition in progress. 18. Waiakea
Robotics take home the Amaze Award. 19. Don
Chambers and Art Kimura. 20. ASIJ’s winning teams.
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