St Peter’s robotics team takes on new challenge
The St Peter’s School robotics team has a new challenge and focus for the FIRST LEGO League 2015 season. The middle school robotics team has accepted the challenge to participate in Trash Trek.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded by Dean Kamen creator of the Segway. Kamen’s purpose of creating FIRST was to generate excitement and energy in the area of STEM education.
Since the first day of school this year, the Brickbusters have been working on their robot, encouraged a new team to form in Williams Bay – the Phantom Ninjas – and have been researching about trash/recycling techniques.
They invited the Phantom Ninjas to the St. Peter’s computer lab to share robotic ideas and Trash Trek education, and invited them to Camp Edwards for teambuilding fun on the low ropes course.
While figuring out what project the Brickbusters wanted to work on this season, the team members needed to research about recycling and landfills. Through this research, they identified an area of recycling need in the St Peter’s community that will make a difference in the amount of trash taken to the landfills each week.
The team created a milk-carton recycling program at the school. Each milk carton must be emptied completely of milk, left open and then recycled. The cartons do not necessarily need to be rinsed but must be liquid free or the carton begins to decompose.
The Brickbusters want to reach out to other schools in the town and county to promote this idea, teacher Jenni Lehman said.
“East Troy now recycles milk cartons so this is a great time to begin,” she said. “Last year alone, the small school of St. Peter’s threw away 11,900 milk cartons. They are recycling them this year.”
The Brickbusters interviewed a local recycling company about recycling of other resources so that they were informed of other options.
Matt Joas, of East Troy Auto Recyclers, met with the team. He brought samples of shredded copper, plastic, and wires. The team was able to learn about the machines Joas and his business uses and the process of recycling ferrous and nonferrous metals.
The students have LEGO models and missions of recycling machines on their robotic competition table that are similar to what Joas uses at his business.
This helped the students to understand the models and their purposes on the table, Lehman said.
Joas said he was impressed with their robot and wished the team luck at regionals in November. The Brickbusters hope to advance to sectionals with their recycling idea, robotic programming skills and their team energy.
The FLL season is six months long, if they make it through each round of competition to the state championships.
The students are creating program steps and milk dump buckets to distribute to other schools if they are interested.
“They can’t wait to get other schools on board with their Trash Trek,” Lehman said.
Looking at street safety
A second project they are revisiting from 2009 is the safety of Division Street and Highway 20. The St. Peter’s Brickbusters help get the pedestrian crosswalk signs installed in 2009 with their Transportation Safety them initiated from Kamen and his planning team. The Brickbuster team of 2009 met with the director of the Department of Transportation in Waukesha, presented at a community planning informational meeting at the East Troy Middle School and presented their idea at the state FIRST LEGO Tournament.
“The new members of Brickbusters would like to revisit or “recycle” the amazing project idea of Transportation Safety in our town at this intersection along with their Trash Trek project,” Lehman said. “East Troy is such a wonderful place to live, the Brickbusters are concerned citizens ready to help make a difference with each project the best that they can.”
The team is set to meet with the DOT on Oct. 30 to revisit the intersection and its safety problems.
The team also has plans to visit the Heritage and create crafts with the seniors using recycled materials or “upcycle” materials to make fun and useful items.
