More than the three R's

Lori Hammelman
Posted 10/17/17

Reading, writing, and robotics?

The HUB Project offers assistance with homework as well as activities designed to be fun and educational. For the past few weeks, several Rochelle Middle School students have been immersed in the field of robotics.

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More than the three R's

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ROCHELLE — Reading, writing, and robotics?

The HUB Project offers assistance with homework as well as activities designed to be fun and educational. For the past few weeks, several Rochelle Middle School students have been immersed in the field of robotics.

This expanding field of technology deals with design, construction, and programming the application of robots. The students in the seven-week course are not only learning the basics of robotics, they are also learning to program their creations to do several basic tasks.

Jodi Baumgartner with the University of Illinois Extension has been teaching basic robotics to school aged students for the past seven years and is heading the instruction for the HUB Project at RMS once a week.

“Every week builds upon itself. We have talked about the different types of engineering careers and how robots are used in the real world from the military to building cars,” Baumgartner said.

On Tuesday, Baumgartner and HUB Project aide Katie Reed were assisting the students with the final assembly steps before moving on to the programming of the robot.

Each robot has five sensors — sound, light, ultrasonic, touch, and an arm. The robots can be programmed to do about 20 tasks. Students have a checklist of challenges they can work on including programming their robot to follow a line, park in a predetermined spot, detect touch, or even distinguish color.

“We will be programming the robots to detect the difference between a blue and red ball…the robot will analyze the color, back up away from the blue ball and hit the red ball,” Baumgartner explained.

Further, Baumgartner said the students have a sense of accomplishment when the challenge has been met. It also teaches them to solve problems.

“The kids get super excited when the tasks get completed correctly,” Baumgartner said. “There are times when things have to be adjusted if it doesn’t work right away, but they learn to work through that. It’s an exciting moment.”

The HUB Project is open to students at Rochelle Middle School, and Central, Lincoln, and May elementary schools. Over the past five years the students have participated in various activities such as cooking lessons, planting flowers, and making rockets.