NORTH KOHALA — Despite a lack of permanent facilities to house their program, the Kohala High School robotics team will be heading to the 2016 VEX Worlds championships — one of only six high school teams in the state to
NORTH KOHALA — Despite a lack of permanent facilities to house their program, the Kohala High School robotics team will be heading to the 2016 VEX Worlds championships — one of only six high school teams in the state to compete in the event.
Kohala’s “Na Paniolo” team be showing off their stuff April 20-23 in Louisville, Kentucky, where they will be grouped with teams from around the world and will have to sort out who does what in a competition called “Nothing But Net.” In a race pitting two groups of two teams against each other to score as many hoops as possible in two minutes, the bots must work together to scoop and score with balls and block their competitors from the net.
Call it building skills for an increasingly global world.
“The students have to learn to recognize their own strengths and weaknesses and those of the teams they align with from all over the world,” said Fern White, robotics program director for the Kohala schools. “That’s workplace readiness, recognizing how to use your strengths to move forward.”
For a 15-second portion of the competition, the bots must operate with complete autonomy. That’s where the programming skills really come in handy — especially since the field is only 12 feet by 12 feet, and parts of it are off-limits to the machines.
But Kohala is ready, and it’s not the first time they’ve been to Worlds. It was for their coding prowess that Na Paniolo won the programming award at the Hawaii State Vex Championship on Oahu in mid-December, earning them a berth at the championship.
Kaimi Hook, a ninth grader, is completely redesigning the team’s robot for Worlds. He wants the machine to have greater agility on the field. Instead of six wheels that can make the machine go forward, backward and in circles, he’s working on a “crab drive” with wheels set at 45 degree angles. The new sideways capability will allow the 18-inch-high vehicle greater manuevering.
Some 800 teams will compete at the event. It gives a chance for lots of students to look over each other’s innovations and see what really works and what doesn’t, Hook said.
“It’s fun, but it’s hard work,” Hook said. “The finals get pretty intense. Some of the teams buckle down and go all out.”
Leading up to April, the team will be fundraising to gain the $1,600 per student and the $850 entry fee needed to attend the event.
“We’ll be fundraising like crazy,” White said.
A new science, technology, engineering and math building to be constructed at the Kohala campus will eventually house the robotics program. Since it’s inception in 2007, robotics has bounced around from auto shop to a quonset hut that was condemned and torn down in 2012, to the old Bond Memorial Public Library, where the school currently leases space for the program.
The real strength of robotics is its inclusiveness, White said. From programming to scouting, fabricating, logistics, video and other facets, robotics encompasses kids from all sorts of academic backgrounds.
“Everybody can find a niche,” she said.
