SJS Robotics Team Gets Ready to Compete

Our big robotics competition is Saturday, and the Robotics Team is hard at work getting ready.

This is our robot, which the students named Karl the Kraken. Our league uses Lego Mindstorms robots to perform tasks on a 4x8 foot playing field. All of the objects needed for the tasks are also made out of Legos.

Here is our scrimmage held last Sunday at St. Joseph H.S. This event gave our team a chance to practice under the same conditions as the real competition. The referees checked our robot to make sure that we followed all the design rules required for our competition.

We only have two and a half minutes to complete as many tasks as possible. Each task earns a different number of points. Here, Josh and Robby are getting the robot set up.

Our team has three chances to run the robot and we are judged based on our top score. Every round we have a different team of students operating the robot.

On Sunday, our team also had a chance to practice giving our project presentation. The scrimmage judges said that we had interesting ideas and a polished presentation. We can't wait to wow the competition judges next Saturday!

This diorama shows our proposed solution, a hydroponics garden that uses its waste water to grow algae biofuel.

 Tamia is working on a model of our proposed system for growing algae. The device is called an algal turf scrubber. Green yarn represents algae. The algae grows on a plastic mesh and can be easily removed for harvesting. When the algae has cleaned the water, it is safe to release into the environment.