“A Great Experience” by Maddie Hansen
If you don’t know what building a robot is like (and chances are you don’t) then here’s a chance to find out. Constructing a robot is much more difficult than it appears. Most people don’t think about how you have to put together hundreds of tiny pieces correctly to get a nice finished product; they think about the robot, not the people who spent hours of hard work on it. Well, this year our sixth-grade HAL class discovered what it felt like from the other point of view: We built the robots.
The most frustrating part of constructing a robot was paying close attention to tiny details in instructions. One tiny screw may not seem very important, but if you put it in the wrong place you will be forced to spend tons of time backtracking.
Screwing in a bolt without someone to help you hold the robot is hard, and there’s many things you can’t do without a partner. That’s why teamwork and communication are vital.
While working, you also have to find a balance between being too reckless and overly cautious, because if you work too quickly, you mess up, and if you work too slowly, you would never get your robot done in time to present.
Building robots is a time to work on robotics skills (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics), and most importantly, to have fun. Everyone had a great experience doing this and really enjoyed the end results. We loved presenting to the rest of the school, it was a great time to “show off” what we learned.
