Robotics Team Gives Board Science Lesson

LYNN KUTTER ENTERPRISE-LEADER Farmington High’s robotics team demonstrates its robot to School Board members, administrators and others attending the March 31 board meeting. The objective was to build a robot that would pick up plastic totes and stack them as quickly as possible. The name of the robotics team is the Nerdy Birds.
LYNN KUTTER ENTERPRISE-LEADER Farmington High’s robotics team demonstrates its robot to School Board members, administrators and others attending the March 31 board meeting. The objective was to build a robot that would pick up plastic totes and stack them as quickly as possible. The name of the robotics team is the Nerdy Birds.

FARMINGTON -- Farmington School Board members received several science lessons at their March meeting.

Four eighth-graders presented their science fair projects to the School Board and the high school's robotics team, called the Nerdy Birds, demonstrated its robot in the parking lot outside the school's Administration Office.

School Board members and Superintendent Bryan Law were sufficiently impressed with all projects.

The robotics team participates in an international program called FIRST Robotics and each year, groups are given a challenge to build a robot and then compete against other teams in the area. The FIRST acronym means "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology."

The objective of FIRST Robotics is for the students to build and operate a machine to achieve the goals in competition, said team sponsor Michael Jackson, a Farmington High science teacher. This is Farmington's second year to participate in the 23-year-old program.

For 2015, teams had to build a robot to pick up plastic totes and stack them as quickly as possible.

Teams have six weeks to take a kit containing parts only and put those parts together to build a robot. Parts include motors, batteries, control system, a mix of automation components and limited instructions.

Different students on the team explained to the School Board how they used mechanical and electrical engineering to build the robot. Others explained computer programming designed to operate the machine. A Power Point presentation provided photos to go along with the explanations.

Farmington's team is sponsored by Baldor Electric Co., of Westville, Okla., and two engineers from Baldor, Jim Riffel and Charles Olsen, serve as mentors for the students. Jackson and the students put in countless hours on the project after school and on Saturdays. Jackson said Olsen and Riffel were just as involved as the students.

Jackson said he was grateful that an area business was interested in helping the students to learn about robotics and engineering in general.

Another volunteer, parent Russ Parry, provided metal fabrication for the robot.

Farmington's robotics team was not able to participate in its regional competition in Little Rock this year because of inclement weather but Jackson said the group has been invited to compete with its robot in a competition in the fall.

Following the science presentations, the School Board turned to action items and quickly took care of those on the March 31 agenda.

It approved a revised school calendar due to snow days. Farmington will add four days to its calendar to make up the snow days. The last day of school will be May 29.

It also approved the 2015-16 school calendar. The first day of school will be Aug. 17. Students will have the week of Thanksgiving off next year and the last day of school, barring any snow days, will be May 23.

The School Board also approved agreements with Boston Mountain Educational Cooperative for its Alternative Learning Environment and Title 1 programs and renewed its lease agreement with NorthWest Arkansas Community College for classroom space in the J building at the high school.

General News on 04/29/2015