Area students advance to regional robot competition next month

SIR is sleek and black, "half Iron Man, half Batman." A group of homeschooled students built the contraption, whose name stands for Skillful, Intelligent Robot.

SIR's performance last month at the "Billiken's Best" state competition advanced the team to a regional competition. On Dec. 5 and 6, "Ironman Robotics: Operation Dark Flight" will compete against 39 other teams at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. There, the team will have another chance to direct SIR to collect supplies and assemble a corrugated plastic airplane in less than three minutes.

"An ironman football team is a team that doesn't have enough players, so they have to play offense and defense. That was how our team was," said the team's marketing manager, 16-year-old Arielle Bohnert. "Last year, we had about 10 members when most teams have 30. Everybody had a lot more jobs. It was the same again this year."

Students from across Southeast Missouri formed a team, including students from Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Gordonville, Scott City, Oran and Altenburg. The rest of the team was from around Farmington, where meetings were held.

Homeschooled students make up a majority of the team, although some students attend public school. Ironman Robotics was the only team from Southeast Missouri to compete at the state competition Oct. 25 at St. Louis University.

Out of eight teams that competed, Ironman Robotics won the Founder's Award, for best use of the engineering process; third place for robot performance; second place in the BEST Award, for promotions, spirit and sportsmanship; and third place for website, among other awards.

At the regional competition, the team hopes to maintain or beat its performance last year, where it placed third in the robot competition. According to Bohnert, that team was the first from Missouri to place at regionals.

Some members have been competing for several years. The first year their robot had to take down and hang up laundry, symbolized by a handkerchief. Last year, it had to load and store supplies in a Mars-like atmosphere.

"The robots are remote-controlled. The motors come with a brain, which we hooked up to a computer. BEST gave us software to program them," said 13-year-old Umar Brimah.

BEST stands for Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology. The Texas-based not-for-profit organization provides materials and students have six weeks to design and assemble a robot. Parents can attend a training session, and groups are encouraged to use mentors. For team Ironman, the father of one of the students, an engineer, provided guidance.

The team used a forklift to retrieve the airplane supplies and used an arm and claw to put the pieces together. "Our robot was different because most teams used one of their four motors to get airplane materials off the rack. Since we used a forklift design, we were able to save two motors for the claw and two motors for the wheels," Brimah said.

Kevin Phelps, 17, joined the team about three weeks into the process. He was primarily responsible for the team's website, http://ironmanrobots.110mb.com, but he also helped test the robot. "It was a big learning curve for me," he said.

Besides the website, the team made fliers and T-shirts to promote the robot. Supporting the aviation theme, last month they organized an event where the EAA Young Eagles gave free, 15-minute plane rides to children at Painton Airport.

Nine of the 12 active members will be attending the regional competition in Arkansas. "So far it's been fun and challenging. I am really excited," Brimah said.

lbavolek@semissourian.com

388-3627

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