By JOSEPH KELLARD
Made of aluminum and metal and weighing in at about 130 pounds, Skippy sports four wheels, six motors, a computer box and a seven-foot arm designed to lift triangular brackets, or triads. Some 20 students initially signed on to the robotics program, and they learned a host of lessons that accompany collaborative projects - from the importance of a division of labor to patience.
"One main thing the kids learned is how to tolerate one another," Rose said when describing the more than 200 total hours the team spent together creating Skippy. "And they learned how to get things done on deadline."
Provided with a standard kit of materials and competition rules, each of the 40 teams from the various schools entering the regional competition had from Jan. 6 to last week to draw up, construct, and ship out their robot to a pre-competition storage facility. On top of being judged for such qualities as excellence of design, the robots - controlled remotely by their joystick-wielding creators - will compete together on a court in picking up and stacking as many triads as possible. This event at Hofstra is the initial step toward earning a spot in the championship FIRST competition at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta from April 21 to 23.
While some schools have had a robotics program since the first FIRST robotics competition 15 years ago, OHS is one of eight rookie teams entering the regionals this year. Deven Lavore, the senior who spearhead the project that produced Skippy, said about his team's prospects this weekend, "Our saving grace is that our robot is very simple, whereas others teams have complicated designs and so they¼re more likely to have technical problems."
Trial and error another lesson the OHS team became quite familiar with while creating and testing Skippy. One practice run saw the robot run wildly all over a field and knock into a goal post. So senior Chris Mascioli and junior Ari Ronen, the students instrumental in programming the robotís computer, went back to
the drawing board to work out the glitches. Another obstacle was Skippy's arm, which was originally too heavy. But the students thought to riddle it with Swiss cheese-type holes to take off some weight.
Whenever problems beset the team and doubts set in, Ed Wilensky, supervisor of OHS Science Department, played the part of the in-house optimist. "Every time something went wrong, I was there cheerleading them on, saying ëwe can do it, we can do it,'" Wilensky said.
With senior and BOCES student Paul Biscegli and his knowledge of electronics and with technical assistance from Oceanside architect Monte Leeper to aide them, the students pressed on determined to complete a functional Skippy.
"The kids wanted to get it done, but they wanted to get it done right," Wilensky stressed.
"I learned that to accomplish something difficult, you really have to work hard, and you have to cooperate with others," said sophomore Jeff Palmeiro.
About two years ago, when Superintendent Dr. Herb Brown asked the recently-hired Wilensky about possibly starting a robotics program, the science supervisor visited several schools with such programs. Wilenskyís sojourns convinced and excited him that Oceanside could start its own and be successful.
"The students learned how to use all the machines in our new technology rooms," he said when citing the lessons the team learned during the first-year trial program. "They learned teamwork, respect for one another, and also, technically, how to design something, and take it to the next step and build it, and then the next step and test it, and work through any problems they experienced."
"I went into this program because I wanted to be involved with people," Palmeiro explained. "But once I got into it I found I really liked learning about robotics."
Senior Tomasz Alemao said he enrolled in the program because he's was a beginning physics student with an interest in engineering and thought robotics would compliment his studies of these subjects. They did, he said. Even Rose, a physics teacher, said he learned about computer programming while advising his team.
"We decided to make it a club first so that we could evaluate the interest of the students," Brown explained. "And now that we know that there is interest, we want to keep it as a club next year and set up a technology class called robotics for 2006."
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