The FIS Robotics Challenge

Every Friday after school, there is a group of students in Grades 6 to 9 who are not rushing home to get the weekend started. Instead, they head to the Upper School’s Design and Technology Makerspace, where they gather as members of the FIS Robotics Club – designers, mechanics, communicators, printers and coders.

The FIS Robotics Club started in 2017 with a group of students who were introduced to EV3 robots: DIY smart machines from Lego Mindstorms. The platform combines traditional modular Lego brick hardware with simple block coding software that allows kids to build and program a robot easily. The EV3 is now being used across the Elementary School and in Grades 6-8 to as a tool to teach computational thinking and coding skills. 

There is a global community of people of all ages involved in idea-sharing, collaborations, contests and competitions surrounding Lego Mindstorms. This year, the FIS Robotics Club will head to the FIRST Tech Challenge at the International School of Stuttgart in March with a brand new robot that that uses all the skills acquired in the last year. Upper School ICT Coordinators and Robotics Club advisors Vafa Anderson and Dianna Pratt are aiming high for the competition and share a bit of background:

“Last year we had 14 students join the club, most of whom had little or no experience programming or working with robots. Then, the Lycée Français Victor Hugo in Frankfurt invited us to take part in their robotics competition. We prepared for weeks, learning, brainstorming, and programming advanced functionalities for the color sensor, gyroscope and ultrasonic sensor. We tested again and again, refining our robots’ design and code to solve issues as fast and efficiently as possible. We learned so much and went into the competition with confidence, but we hadn’t properly assessed the difficulty of the challenge.”

There were over 200 students at the event. During practice sessions, the FIS rookie team watched in awe as a few other teams completed tasks with lightning speed. It recalibrated their assessment of the competition and drew them back to work with renewed focus and motivation to make the code even sharper. At the competition, the first challenge appeared easy: get a robot to follow a line around a simple course as fast as possible. With their sharper design and skills from the practice sessions, the FIS team made it through several rounds and finished in the top 16. 

“We are really proud of our result,” says Mr. Anderson. “These were students who had little experience with coding or robotics mere weeks before. It was an amazing experience and it motivated us to aim even higher this year.” 

This year’s competition challenges will be more complex and require higher levels of robot design and coding abilities. With the new REV Robotics competition kit, members of the FIS Robotics team learn about the machine’s more advanced sensors, controllers and motors to figure out how to build and program the robot for the competition.  

During each match, students will be required to program a robot that can autonomously navigate a playing field past obstacles to find the correct location to drop an item. The robot must do this on its own, relying on its sensor data and programmed algorithms to make decisions. There will also be a two-minute game period where two students from each team control the robot to pick up various items and place them in designated spots. 

“It is impossible to design the robot to do everything so there is a lot of strategy involved,” says Mr. Anderson. “The students must decide which tasks they think they can accomplish and design the robot to do them as efficiently as possible.” 

FIS aims to develop a robust robotics team in the upper grades to compete in global challenges. Lending support to that goal is the experience of computational thinking – the process of identifying, solving and communicating problems as well as representing solutions to be carried out by humans and machines – that is taking place throughout the entire school. Students in all grade levels practice the tenets of computational thinking: algorithmic thinking, decomposition, abstraction and pattern recognition. Implicitly, students develop leadership, communication, collaboration and creative problem-solving skills.  

“We have very young students in Pre-primary using algorithms to solve problems when coding with Bee-Bots – small robots that they can program to learn about directionality, planning, sequencing, counting and teamwork,” says Ms. Pratt.  

Robotics and computational thinking help take the school’s future-oriented initiatives  – technology infused and not – where they need to go: practicing and learning what it takes to adapt, understand, change, rescue, legislate and manage a world that brings out the best in us all, reflects our creations, and where we can all grow and thrive.

Maria Monteiro
FIS Parent