Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Wednesday, February 01, 2012

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Side-mounted "armor" plates might help protect this sumobot in battle.

When he’s not breeding show horses, Jerry Whitson can likely be found tinkering with robots.

“My dining room looks like it’s owned by LEGO,” said Whitson, a parent volunteer at Bryan Station Middle School, Lexington Traditional Magnet School and Northern Elementary. “I get LEGOs for birthdays and LEGOs for Christmas and I’m 55 years old!”

Last year he built a LEGO robotic candy dispenser to display at the school district’s STEM Fair. This time he’s designed a tracked vehicle to show students yet another possibility.

Whitson has his hands full preparing kids and projects for the Feb. 11 fair (STEM = science, technology, engineering, mathematics). He guides more than 60 students in the three after-school robotics clubs. They will group their showcase tables in the STEM Fair’s robotics room and present more than two dozen sumobots, which are supposed to “wrestle” on a circular wooden mat.

“They have to learn to use programming software and download their programs to their robots to get them to do exactly what they want them to do. It’s very demanding,” he said.

This is the first year he’s tried sumobots at Bryan Station Middle, where his son attends, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive.

“These kids are all geared up for this. They’re having fun, and they’re learning at the same time,” said Whitson, who noted how the sumobots have attracted new members to the club. “Not only are we getting more kids and retaining them throughout the program, there’re days when class is over at 5 and we don’t leave until 5:30 or 5:45. They don’t want to go home. They want to do this.”

The Bryan Station students, who meet for an hour on Monday afternoons, paired up last semester to start working on a half-dozen sumobots. Their creations operate autonomously on a 4-foot-diameter board and battle like sumo wrestlers.

“We’re trying to disable or push the other off the board. Disabling can vary from ripping off a wheel to flipping it on its side,” explained eighth-grader Cameron Skubik-Peplaski, whose bot sports defensive armor plates.

Sensors detect the narrow white border of the black mat, keeping the robot on the playing surface. An ultrasonic sensor, which judges distance, locks in on an opponent in its path and prompts the bot to attack.

“If it is touched by another robot, it will respond accordingly,” as Cameron said.

For seventh-grader Patrick Johnson, whose cousin encouraged him to join the robotics club, that’s the most exciting part: “You get to build it with all your hard work and then watch others’ get destroyed.”

Through years of experience, Whitson has devised his own robotics curriculum and figured out how to set students on the right track. He’s there to answer questions, but mostly the youngsters put their heads together and troubleshoot their own technical problems.

“You have to teach them how to use the programming language and move on to design. Once they understand the basic movements, they move forward with their project,” he said. “You’re going many different directions. Some students will absorb it a little bit faster, but eventually they all end up on the same page at the end.”

Along the way, the students practice teamwork and learn to express their own ideas and accept others’ opinions for the common good. “They all struggle with the engineering because there’s no right or wrong answer – it’s what works,” Whitson noted.

“Everybody’s focused, they’re motivated, they’re having fun,” he added. “What we’re doing here is a steppingstone. Once they move to high school, we move away from the plastic parts, and the programming becomes more intense. This is a step in the door.”

If you go

Sumobot demonstration

• Who: Bryan Station Middle School’s robotics club
• When: Noon, Saturday Feb. 4
• Where: Barnes & Noble in Hamburg

District STEM Fair

• What: Showcase and celebration of FCPS students’ use of technology to support science, engineering mathematics and the arts
• When: Saturday Feb. 11
• Where: Bryan Station High School
• More details: www.stlp.fcps.net/stem
• Highlights: Students will be working on the STLP RCX Challenge-Environmental Cleanup, and information about FIRST LEGO League will be available. The Fayette High School FIRST Robotics Team, Southside Tech's VEX Robotics and Newton’s Attic will all be there as well.
• Notable: In the robotics showcase, students will be judged on productivity and creativity with the technology, problem-solving, communication and collaboration, confidence and enthusiasm, and booth design and enhancement.

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