RSSAA Robotics Club: The Fighting Gnomes (LS) & Steiner Steel Storm (HS) teams

By Karen Paperniak, RSSAA Parent & Robotics Club Advisor
with Andrea Basso, Robotics Club Parent & RSSAA Librarian

The ROBOTICS FAIR is happening!

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

[TIME] 
6:00 to 7:30 pm, setup at 5:30

[LOCATION] 
Rudolf Steiner School
2775 Newport Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48103

The Robotics Fair will be held at the Lower School Gym next week. 

Both Middle Grades and High School robotics teams will demonstrate their robots and talk about how they build them. Robotics teams from Skyline and Fenton High Schools and other teams will attend. Mini-workshops will be held on gear boxes, design strategies, and other aspects.

Come join us for an informative evening! Refreshments will be served.

Hosted by The Fighting Gnomes & Steiner Steel Storm Robotics Teams

Read on to learn more about the Robotics Club and related library books:

Last year and this year have been exciting years for Robotics at the Rudolf Steiner School.   

Last year was our rookie year for the High School Robotics Team, Steiner Steel Storm, FRC 5067.   

This year we started a Middle School robotics team called The Fighting Gnomes, FTC 8603. 

Both teams purchase a kit of parts, design, build and repair a robot, then compete with other schools in Michigan. For our rookie years we have been grateful to receive grants to cover most of the costs for registrations and kits. 

Each year in each age group thousands of teams are given the same game rules and specifications to build a robot. Handwork and woodworking, physics, and math skill are used to create prototypes and develop a robot using the fifty to one hundred specifications.    

Early on in the design phase it’s important to decide upon a strategy for playing the game with robot. The strategy dictates design, purchasing of parts, and creating additional robot components. 

We use specified DC motors, controllers (Talons, Jaguars, DC Motor Controller), processors (NXT, CRIO), limit switches and spikes on our robots. While building the robots we try to use an agile development approach to establish to-do, doing, and done lists to understand what needs to be complete each week to  create a working robot. 

If you would like to learn more about our team and robot, join us at the Robotics Fair on Dec. 17th!  

For information about the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) program for youth, you can visit www.usfirst.org.

Visit the Ellie Klopp Library at the Lower School and check out the books below or look for books in our General Collection with Call Numbers in the 600's...these are books in the general category of Technology.

General Collection [Call Number 629.8/Bri]

Readers Collection [R/Buc]