MERRIMACK – With the press of a button, Elan Brest's robot broke through a Lego wall at the beginning of an obstacle course, splitting bricks in half rather than just pushing the wall to one side.
The 9-year-old's creation continued toward a junk pile, which proved to be a tougher barrier for his small, motorized car. The car pushed the broken wall directly into the pile, stopping the robot's movement immediately.
"If the wall weren't there, it would be, like, 10 times easier," said Brest after his practice run.
Brest was one of 13 campers at this year's Lego Camp at Merrimack Middle School. The camp, designed to get kids 8-14 interested in science and engineering and expose them to the high school's robotics team, ran Monday-Friday.
Chop Shop, the Merrimack High School FIRST Robotics Team, uses the camp as a fundraiser to help raise part of the $4,000 fee each member must pay before the school year. The money covers the costs of materials, instruction and travel. Members serve as counselors for the camp, and help kids learn the software to program the Lego Mindstorms RCX robots.Although counselors help them along the way, campers were left to design, build and program their creations. Each robot had to pass through an obstacle course designed by the counselors, which consisted of tasks like traveling over a pile of Lego pieces and pushing a box through obstacles to the finish line.
"It's just a ton of fun to be able to do this and be able to see different minds solve the same task," said Alex Brunelle, a 17-year-old member of the Chop Shop team and Merrimack resident.
"That's pretty much the most fun I've been able to see with all the robotics stuff, even at the high-school level. When you set a task, and pretty much every team is going to come up with something different to solve each task. It's really cool to be able to look at an 8-year-old when you're 17 and go, 'Wow, I would've never thought of that.' "
Fran Leach, the camp director and a middle school science teacher in Derry, has been coaching Lego teams since the mid '90s, although she hasn't built a Mindstorms robot or learned the programming because she wants the kids to figure everything out on their own.
"I can truly say my kids do all the work, because I don't know how to do it," said Leach, who sets deadlines and oversees events during the camp, which was started in 2004. "They'll learn more by doing it own their own."
The camp is entirely hands-on, and at times, she said, she feels the camp could almost run itself.
"I have to make them stop for lunch," Leach said with a smile.
"They say, 'Oh, do we have to?' Even at lunch, 'Can we go back to the robots?' 'No, you've got 10 more minutes.' "
The kids were able to choose one partner to work on their robots. The computer program required for the robots doesn't take long to learn, Leach said, and the campers had a basic robot built and programmed by the end of the first day.
Nick Fernandes, a counselor and one the original members of the camp, said the hardest part for the kids is working together to discover a way to complete tasks, as they have to build their way from a basic program to a flexible system that allows for numerous changes.
"You have to program your robot initially to see what you can do with it, and then you make it more defined and detailed," said Fernandes, 15, of Merrimack.
"Trial and error – it's a lot of that."
Leach agreed the program forced the kids to evaluate their designs frequently, which she thinks provides a much-needed challenge.
"Life is too easy – you have to keep doing it," said Leach. "They think that they can just do something. They don't realize there's nothing wrong with trial-and-error.
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