The Carlton J. Kell High School Robotics Team was started in 2003-2004 as a co-curricular activity participating in the FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition. The primary mission of our team is to promote interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) activities and careers.
The team has recognized that the increasing urbanization of society and other factors has resulted an increasing societal disconnect from our natural world. This disconnect has important but subtle implications for our future environmental sustainability. A threat to conservation is a declining number of outdoor type people. Influencing youth into entering this environment has the potential of reversing this trend.
We are working to solve multiple problems at once. Integrating traditional education with non-traditional informal education activities such as FIRST programs in an environmental sustainability outreach effort has the opportunity to achieve several goals.
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Increase public awareness about the issues of marine debris and educate the public on how to help prevent them.
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Develop a practical technology for recovering difficult to reach debris in lakes, rivers, and streams. |
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Introduce elementary school children to the issues of marine debris and marine sustainability. Each year we have a statewide art contest where we ask 3rd grade students to use their imagination to design a robot to clean up water pollution. In order to prepare these students for this contest, the team developed a 3rd grade lesson plan that aligned with the Georgia Performance Standards (GPS S3L2) for 3rd grade science education. |
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Challenge elementary school children's perception about what engineers do. Help them make the transition from perceiving that engineers drive trains to that of applying technology to create solutions for environmental sustainability. We do this by having these students help our team 'design' the robot. |
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Inspire our peers in the FIRST Robotics community worldwide to follow our example and use their skills and knowledge to pursue similar activities. |
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Influence students into leaving their video games and pursuing STEM activities. The ultimate plan is to have the students take their machines to the outdoors, consequently discovering the pleasures of conservation. This goal was set by the team in June of 2007. |
The technology that we have used to pick up the trash came in the form of a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, that we have dubbed "Corky". The ROV has been a 3 year project, starting from the idea of something that would clean up trash, all the way to its current state and with plans for the future to upgrade it. We began construction by teaching students how to build a watercraft using polystyrene foam and fiberglass, along with sheet metal and aluminum that we use on our competitive robots. Once we had a floating vehicle, we began the objective of making it actually pick up the trash. After brainstorming many different ideas between students on the team, a maneuverable basket was made out of recycled robot parts and attached to the ROV. This basket could dip in and out of the water, skimming the tops of lakes and picking up the mess.
For the future of the ROV, plans have been made to build an upgraded version of the original in the following year. This includes more functionality and abilities such as side-scan sonar, underwater grappling hooks (which incorporate another "smart" design that students and mentors have been designing) and a smaller, more easily transported craft that can pick up just as much as the original. We would like to build the new craft where it can drive itself in and out of the water, possibly picking up amounts of trash that collect on the shoreline (which we discovered is common in our initial tests this past year.)
To learn more about our efforts visit our website at www.kellrobotics.org
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