Camdenton LASER Robotics Team Receives NASA Scholarship, Preps For State Competition | Lake of the Ozarks Community News

The Camdenton Laker After-School Science, Engineering and Robotics (LASER) 3284 team was recently in the national spotlight, as they prepare to compete at a statewide competition this month, and an international competition in 2020.

The team won two awards Tuesday, April 16 through Saturday, April 20 at the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Championship in Houston, TX. More than 15,000 students, from 40 countries competed with team-built robots, putting their innovation skills to the test. More than 30,000 attended the finals on Saturday night.

Engineering Inspiration Award

The Camdenton LASER team took home the Engineering Inspiration Award, which celebrates outstanding success in advancing the respect and appreciation of engineering within the team’s school, community and beyond. The Camdenton LASER team, now in their 10th year, have helped to mentor, assist, or start more than 200 FIRST teams in Missouri!

Lobbying for Robotics

In an effort to see a robotics team in all Missouri schools, the LASER team met with representatives of Missouri Governor Mike Parson’s office. They also spoke with members of the Missouri House of Representatives on Wednesday, May 1. According to Comer, the students discussed the need to fund robotics teams in rural communities. She believes that good discussions were started regarding the importance of students being involved in quality Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) programs like FIRST. Dean Kamen, founder of FIRST, said, “We can’t build the future for our children. We must build our children for the future.”

NASA Scholarship

The Engineering Inspiration award prequalified LASER for the 2020 World Championships and the team received a $5,000 scholarship from NASA, that can be used to pay their fee in the 2020 FIRST Championships in Houston, TX. Jim Bridenstine, administrator of NASA, addressed students on Saturday night of the championships saying, “Thirty years of FIRST robotics, it gets more impressive every year… In November, I had the opportunity to go out to the NASA Jet Propulsion Center in California… many were graduates of the FIRST robotics program. Think about this: 10 years ago, they were in your seat. Ten years from now, where will you be? What will you discover?”

Chairman’s Award

The LASER team has won the regional Chairman’s Award for six years in a row, including 2019. The Chairman’s Award is the most prestigious award at FIRST. It honors the team that best represents a model for other teams to emulate and best embodies the mission of FIRST. The mission of FIRST is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering, and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.

Laboratory Safety Award

The LASER team were also the recipients of their third consecutive Championship Underwriters Laboratory Safety Award, which celebrates the team that progresses beyond safety fundamentals, by using innovative ways to eliminate or protect against hazards. LASER Team members are 100 percent certified as Youth Mental Health Counselors, in Equity and Diversity, in Stop the Bleed Training, Fire Extinguisher Safety, CPR and AED.

The LASER Team has seven mentors and three coaches. The coaches are Mitch and Sherry Comer and Jim Jackson.

The Robot

FIRST students learn to think like engineers. The teams build robots from a kit of parts, they design and fabricate custom parts, develop strategies, document their progress in a notebook and compete in head to head competitions based on sport models.

The LASER robot’s name is Decennium, Latin for the word decade, since this is their 10th anniversary. Decennium had six wins, two ties and two losses at the Championship and ended ranked 14th out of 66 teams in the Turing Division.

Every year, there is a new challenge. Each team designs their robot as they see fit. They have 42 days to design a robot using 3D modeling. Once modeled, they go into machining. The robot is made out of mostly aluminum and polycarbonate. Once complete, the robot goes into a sealed bag and it cannot be touched until competition. The team builds two robots, one for competition, and one for practice.

2019 Robotics Competition Game

In the Destination Deep Space competition, two competing alliances collected samples on planet Primus. Unpredictable terrain and weather patterns made remote robot operation essential to their mission on the planet. With only 2:30 until liftoff, the alliances gathered as many cargo pods with their robots as possible and prepared their spaceships before the next sandstorm arrived. At 2:30: A sandstorm limited driver visibility, so robots independently follow pre-programmed instructions or are operated by human drivers, via video from their habitat. Alliances score points by: deploying robots from habitat, preparing rockets and cargo ship with hatch panels, loading cargo pods into their rockets and at 2:15: the sandstorm clears, human operators take control of their robots. Alliances continue to score points by: preparing rockets and the cargo ship with hatch panels, loading more cargo pods, returning the robot safely to the alliance’s habitat. At 0:00: is the rocket liftoff, the alliance with the highest score at the end of the match wins the cargo ship!

“The Championship was an amazing experience for the students, mentors and coaches,” Comer enthused. “We met students from all over the world. One minute the kids are aligned with a team, and the next minute they are competing against them. They are learning the 21st century skills of collaboration, communication, critical thinking and working as a team. These are all skills that will serve them well, no matter what career they go into.”

There is also more than $80 million in college scholarships, and 2,000 individual scholarship opportunities, from nearly 200 scholarship providers, available in the FIRST programs.

The FIRST program combines the high intensity world of sports with STEM education. Four states, so far, have declared robotics as an extra-curricular sport statewide and the LASER Team is pulling to make FIRST officially declared a sport with the Missouri State High School Activities Association.

LASER Team President Josh Harmon was featured on the Good Morning America  show.

“Forget baseball and basketball, the newest high school sport may have kids tinkering with technology,” the GMA announcer said. “Robotics is a sport where every kid can go pro and these championships are their Super Bowl!”

Harmon is a starting left guard in varsity football. “Robotics will set me up for life,” Harmon said on GMA. “I can play a game football, and it is a lot of fun, or I can join a FIRST robotics team and impact people’s lives forever.”

LASER Team Member Maya Irvine and Coach Sherry Comer also appeared in a local ABC affiliate news story where they discussed the importance of girls in STEM. “Many girls are scared to go into the male dominated STEM fields,” Maya Irvine said. “But we want them to know that any woman is just as capable as a man, If she wants to do it.”

FIRST LEGO

There are five levels of FIRST Robotics in the Camdenton School District:

FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) High School Team 3284 Grades 9-12

FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) Camdenton Middle School Grades 7-8

FIRST LEGO Leagues (FLL) Hawthorne Elementary, Osage Beach Elementary, Hurricane

Deck Elementary and Oak Ridge Intermediate Grades 4-6

FIRST Jr. LEGO Leagues (JrFLL) Dogwood Elementary and Osage Beach Elementary

Grades 1-3

Laser was one of six sites in the US to pilot the new FIRST Discover program for preschool this year!

Innovative Explorers Award and Cooperative Model Award

The Camdenton Schools FIRST LEGO League Jr. students in grades Kindergarten through third grade, from the Osage Beach Elementary and Dogwood and Hawthorne Elementary also competed in the FLL Jr Championship in Houston, TX. They won two awards, the Innovative Explorers Award and the Cooperative Model Award.

Deep Space and Japan

On Saturday, May 18, the LASER team will participate in the Destination Deep Space State Championship at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo. In May 2020, the team will travel to Japan to assist in the Japan’s Inaugural FIRST International Tournament.

For additional information about LASER call Comer at 573-346-9233.