By Janelle Fisher
City Pages Editor
ASHWAUBENON – The Ashwaubenon Community Pool served as the venue for 20 teams of middle schoolers from across the state to compete in SeaPerch — an underwater robotics competition.
To prepare for the event, students put their STEM skills to the test to create a vehicle which can be remotely operated while underwater to complete various tasks.
“It’s a lot of work in a short amount of time,” said Daniel Dennis, a science teacher at Leonardo da Vinci School for Gifted Learners and coach of a SeaPerch team. “You start with planning and visualizing what it’s going to be like… And then building motors, learning how to solder, learning how to cut PVC, learning what buoyancy is.”
To make sure students and coaches have the support they need to be successful in SeaPerch, several local organizations have stepped up to help.
“Parents are asked all the time to pay for events for their kids,” said Ann Franz, executive director of both the NEW Manufacturing Alliance and North Coast Marine Manufacturing Alliance said. “So we actually pay for the kits for the students so they don’t have to — it’s about $200 for each kit — so they don’t have to have their parents pay to participate. That way we can get kids who wouldn’t have the money to purchase a kit like this, and they can participate, too.”
On the educational side of things, the Einstein Project lends a hand.
“The Einstein Project really works with schools in finding teams and then coaching their coaches on how to teach kids how to build the robot,” Franz said.
Once the robots are complete, Franz said there are three stages to the competition.
“First is an obstacle course where there’s hoops that they have to go in and out and up and down and they’re timed to see how fast they do it,” she said. “Then, there’s a mission challenge where they have to pick up items and move doors and they’re timed for how fast they were able to do all the different activities. Then third, because we know communications skills are so important, they also have to present on their experience at the event. Those three challenges give them their ultimate score.”
The top two highest-scoring teams of the day advance to the national competition, held in Maryland, to compete against teams from across the country.
Although the event is competitive, Dennis said the environment is highly supportive.
“The three teams that we have here are awesome…” he said. “They are very positive with each other. They lift each other up. They encourage each other. It feels very much like a positive competition where everybody has opportunities and everybody’s supporting one another.”
To learn more about SeaPerch, visit northcoastmma.com/seaperch.