Geauga Engineering and Robotics 4-H Club wows at National Robotics Championship | Geauga Archives
Members of Geauga Engineering and Robotics (GEAR) 4-H Club dominated at the recent National Robotics Challenge, with teams earning top accolades out of thousands of students.
Led by advisors Jeff and Adrienne La Favre, scientists who started the club in 2014, the members began working on their projects in October – building robots for a function and practicing operating them.
The team of West Geauga Middle School eighth graders Lena Wright, Mandi Petonic, Molly Moidell and Janna Winningham took second place as well as the prestigious Honda Innovation Award – the top prize at the competitions – out of over 460 robots and 1,300 participants at their event, Rescue Robot, which simulates saving victims in a collapsed building.
With an innovative arm that they designed themselves, their robot was literally one of a kind in the competition.
Their original robot took a great deal of practice – not least, Lena’s training to prepare her to remote-control the robot’s arm.
Preparing each other to “expect the unknown,” the girls would make Lena leave the room, blindfold her and bring her back in to start controlling the robot.
“We would do very funny, bizarre things that you would never see,” like putting stairs in front of the robot, Janna said.
They laughed about the irony that the competition ended up having stairs.
It felt empowering to be the only team of four girls and compete so well, Mandi said. “Even one of the judges said, ‘I love seeing girls in STEM, because we don’t see very many,’” she said.
They said they got a laugh hearing other groups’ chatter as they walked by. Older kids and even other club advisors said, “Who were those girls?” “Did they really make that?” and took pictures of their robot.
They also got accolades from the judges for being polite. They said the process strengthened their bond as friends, knowledge of robots and confidence.
The sixth-grade team of Collette Johnson, Sam Geraci and Noah Lear won first place, or gold, with their rescue robot.
At the beginning, Sam was going to work on all of the different electrical components, Collette would program and 3D print and Noah would build the frame. By the end, they were all helping each other out. They always ran their robot on a practice course after school.
Many other teams used a kit to put their robot together, while they built theirs using their own innovation as well as drawing on past club members’ designs, like the other teams did.
The first day of the three-day championship in Marion was for practice. Then, the competition organizers changed the course.
Their robot had been completing the challenge in record time, but after the course changed, “we had no hope,” Sam said.
“We were so stressed,” Noah said.
Yet, they prevailed. They felt like it was impossible, but they problem-solved and won, Sam said.
They each said they look forward to continuing with GEAR, building on their skills and future competitions.
Best buds Sam and Noah excel in building and see a future career in it, such as engineering. Despite her programming prowess, Collette wants to be a lawyer. “Both my parents are artists, so they don’t know what happened,” she joked.
Sixth-grader Ginny Goodall programmed a robot to navigate a complex maze for the middle school division of the maze contest. Because of a scoring system in which judges give the rank they feel is deserved, Ginny took home the bronze medal, or third place, but no one scored above her. Out of about 40 other teams, none won first or second place.
“It really made me think about what I want to improve on the robot,” she said.
“The very first code I made didn’t even make it through the first turn,” she recalled. She thought she would not be able to write the code, but looking back on it, it seems easy, she said.
Ginny started in 4-H showing pygmy goats at the fair when she was 8. She joined GEAR after seeing club members’ projects at the fair piqued her interest.
