The East Cooper Center for Advanced Studies’ robotics club brings together students with an interest in all aspects of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). The robotics club specializes in designing, building and coding robots.
Senior Maria Francesca Picone joined the robotics club her sophomore year with a sparked interest in engineering.
Recently, students began building the robot they will compete with during the actual competition season.
“We …have been working on this project all fall and winter, which is what we consider off season.” Picone said.
This project is called the Litter Bot. Although it is still in the beginning stages of development, the Litter Bot is aimed at helping the planet, as it is being built to go around the school and pick up litter using a claw.
In order to divide up the work, members of the robotics club chose what specific part of the robot they wanted to work on, such as the claw, chassis or arm.
Sophomore Trevor Miller works on building the chassis or frame of the robot. Although students like Miller are only focused on one part of the robot, they all share a common goal.
The team is hoping to eventually attach cameras to the robot as a vision system. This vision system will make it so the robot can automatically detect trash, making the process much easier.
“So we wanted to do it mostly to get [the Sustainability Award], because once you get it you can get points for your team, which will help you out and get you higher during the actual competition,” Picone said. “We wanted to help keep the school clean and help the environment.”
This goal encouraged the team to try and develop the most efficient robot possible.
“[The litter bot] is like an autonomous way to grab trash especially in places where humans can’t really, or shouldn’t, be.” Miller said.
Freshman Gavin Anderson has been involved in robotics since elementary school. Now, he gets the chance to compete with the robotics team at a higher level.
“The biggest challenge is just designing something where it can be enclosed and run off as little processes as possible to try and minimize failures that could occur,” Anderson said.
Before the Litter Bot was being built, Gavin and other members spent many minutes manually picking up trash with regular trash-grabbers around the school.
“We wanted to run two experiments with that,” Anderson said. “We wanted to see what type of claw worked best and what type of trash was most common.”
These experiments build teamwork and help the club test what works versus what doesn’t. Trial and Error is a major part of building a robot.
“The robotics club has helped a lot,” Picone said. “At first I was like ‘how I am supposed to build a robot,’ but then with all the mentors and everyone helping, over time you learn it … And I think it has helped me get to where I am.”
