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NANTICOKE — Robots are taking over Luzerne County Community College, using sensors to move around and battle each other.
And they are all programmed by children ages 12 to 14.
With the help of LEGO Mindstorm NXT kits, several area children are spending this week learning to program, code and build the robots at the school.
“I’m amazed at how quick students learn,” instructor Leighann Feola-Hartz said.
Feola-Hartz teaches mathematics for the Hazleton Area School District and said children adapt quickly.
“I could come in, tell them what to do and say ‘bye,’” she said.
In one corner of the room, 12-year-old Connor Gavlick, of Larksville, watched as his robot, named ‘The Destroyer,’ rolled over the silver tape line. He explained that he had to code a sensor in the robot to only pick up the color. It followed the colored line on the floor, even reversing itself at the end of the line to come back to Gavlick.
“I think Legos are really cool,” he said as he worked on the program on the laptop computer. “I like building and programming.”
Feola-Hartz said children 9 to 11 learned about robots during the week of July 11. At the end of the week, the robots battled, and it was the girls versus the boys.
“We learn some stuff. We teach some stuff,” Ariana Piestrak, 12, of Nanticoke, said about working with the boys. Feola-Hartz said she was impressed with the sharing of information between the students.
Piestrak and Kaleah Moran, 12, of Nanticoke, were friends from school who were diligently working on a robot of their own.
“We’re in a pickle right now,” Moran said.
Their bot, ‘The NXT,’ had an issue and needed a new “brain.” Moran reassured that the pair would have the brain back up to speed by the time they left class Wednesday or early Thursday.
Piestrak remembers seeing a robot on the television when she was 7 and saying, “I want to do that.” Her love for robotics, she noted, was heightened by her family when, for a recent Christmas, she received a Meccano MeccaNoid robot. That robot, like the robots made this week, was programmed by Piestrak.
“I like to program,” Peistrak said.
Even though their friends call the week “nerd camp,” the two girls power through.
“I think more girls should do it,” Moran said.
The bots go through a best-of-three battle at the end of the week, and the students had a practice run on Wednesday. If a bot doesn’t have a good skill set during one battle, the students run to their laptops and reprogram it.
Asked if they get frustrated having to reprogram, each child said, “No.”
“I find it fun,” Moran said.
