I am starting a robot club at my high school this Wednesday and I wanted to hear some input from you guys. This will be the schools first program of this type and I want to make sure it lives on after I graduate. This is also the first club of any kind started by a student in like 20 years EDIT (At my school, not every school lol). So my questions are…
What should be the first project? (low-budget around $600)
Our school doesn’t have ANY CNC machines, drills (of any kind lol), or just any tools for metal (we do have a wood working class though)
How should we go about the club? Should it be a learning experience mainly or should it be for people that already have experience in the field?
How can I go about the program without upsetting our strict school board?
There are lots of high school robotics clubs in existance. You need to benchmark their charters and organization before trying to make your own. You will probably need a school faculty member to be a sponser for the club to provide oversight. A lot of up front homework on forming a school club will go a long way with the school board.
I meant its the first club at my school started by a student in a long time . Thanks for the reply, I have already confirmed the club with the board and we already have a sponsor, I just would just like to hear your experiences and/or opinions on what we should do in the club.
What is the level of experience in robotics of your target group? If they are newbies then start with VEX or Basic Stamps both will introduce everyone to robotics from beginner to advanced and there is TONS of support on the internet.
Vex is a good idea, I guess a lot of schools use it because of it’s popularity in competitions.The experience that most have is programming related but there are a few of us who have a lot of experience. Would building and programming a lynx arm to perform different tasks or building an autonomous lynx robot be good? I guess it just comes down to what the rest of the group thinks.
Where are you located? I’d suggest finding a local robotics competition to participate in if possible. Building a robot for a competition helps provide structure and deadlines to make sure your members learn and accomplish something great. No offense but from my experience mentoring students I find that many usually lack the attention span needed to work effectively without a specific goal and deadlines. A competition changes the focus from “What should we build?” to “What do we need to build to win?” which is a question that is easier to focus on. Building a robot for a competition also helps you to decide what components to purchase by seeing what other competitors use.
If there aren’t any local events to participate in, consider organizing something yourself. Pick a task or objective then split the club members into 2 teams and have each build their own robot. Having multiple teams also improves participation since it’s difficult for several people to simultaneously work on one robot. Choose a date for the competition (Maybe the last week of a semester) then see which team is successful.
Advertise the competition and invite other students to come see! Generate interest so you’ll have more club members the following year. The 2nd year you can buy more components but reuse the old robot parts to build 3 robots with three teams, then 4 robots with 4 teams the year after that and so on. Every year the competition gets more exciting and you can make it more complex.
Thank you for the response! It’s good to here from a lot of people with experience, I also checked out your website and it seems you know what you are talking about . There is only one robotics competition every year in my area so I think that your plan on splitting the team into two groups and having our own would be great. I see you do a lot of sumo bot stuff, I guess we should do that too. Our second meeting is tomorrow, (no one knew about the first one due to horrible planning), we will hopefully have a good turn out and I will introduce everyone to the idea. I guess highschoolers would be more interested in fighting the robots than making an autonomous GPS rover…
. Thanks for the reply, I have already confirmed the club with the board and we already have a sponsor, I just would just like to hear your experiences and/or opinions on what we should do in the club.
. There is only one robotics competition every year in my area so I think that your plan on splitting the team into two groups and having our own would be great. I see you do a lot of sumo bot stuff, I guess we should do that too. Our second meeting is tomorrow, (no one knew about the first one due to horrible planning), we will hopefully have a good turn out and I will introduce everyone to the idea. I guess highschoolers would be more interested in fighting the robots than making an autonomous GPS rover… 