Mill Pond School’s Lego Robotics program earns trophy at state competition

By Joseph Cyr
Staff Writer
    HODGDON — The Lego robotics program at Hodgdon’s Mill Pond School remains alive and well. An After School program led by instructor Robert Goulet, the Lego Robotics program has maintained a solid following with middle school students for the past five years in Hodgdon.
    Last year, the group participated in a state competition at the Augusta Civic Center earning praise for their efforts. The group returned to the state competition in December, 2010 and managed to bring home a trophy for “Quality Design,” which is presented to a team whose understanding and application of sound mechanical principals produces the most solid, predictable, dependable and extraordinary robot.
    Thirteen students from the school participated in the event. Competing were Hannah May, Leigha Jurson, Nathanial Stoddard, Dylan Jurson, Austin Albert, Jasity Stoddard, Devin Ivey, Andrew Theriault, Jason Mulvey and Isaiah Dupuis. Luke Wiegand served as an alternate, while Morgan Bolling was the team’s mascot and Donald Devoe was a high school mentor.
    Known as the Augusta FIRST Challenge, students from around the state came up with small robotic devices designed from Lego parts and motors and had to solve a particular problem. Last year, the competition focused on transportation issues, while this year’s theme was “bio-medical issues.”
Contributed photo
LEGO ROBOTICS — Members of the Hodgdon Mill Pond Lego Robotics team that participated in the state Augusta FIRST Challenge were, front row, Leigha Jurson; second row from left, Andrew Theriault, Jasity Stoddard, Morgan Bolling, Jason Mulvey and Dylan Jurson; third row, Nathaniel Stoddard, Devin Ivey, Luke Wiegand, Austin Albert, Hannah May and Isaiah Dupuis; and fourth row, assistant coach Andrew Stoddard, parent volunteer Jared Carter and coach Rob Goulet.
    According to Goulet, the challenge was broken up into two parts — a robot game and researching real world topics.
    “The theme was called ‘Body Forward’ and focused on how robotics, science and technology can be used to solve bio-medical problems,” Goulet explained. “As an example, a robotic arm model needed to be activated by a robot to grab a patent for an experimental prosthetic.”
    In the design of its robot, the students took in many ideas from each other and incorporated those ideas into a model.
    “The new students and veterans have both found the time during robotics to have fun,” said Donald Devoe, a high school mentor with the group. “Robotics gave them the ability to have fun with science, technology. I helped students during meetings so that each opinion was heard. We didn’t think we could finish programing in time, but with my help, we created some good programs and earned a trophy, and a great sense of accomplishment.”
    The program also helps students interact with their peers.
    “Our robotics group helped our community by showing other kids the fun of science,” Devoe said. “During dress rehearsals we got some teachers interested by just telling them about it. I believe we have improved since last year. First, from a technology standpoint and also we have grown socially. We have become closer as a group. We seem to all get along and if there is conflict they work it out with in minutes.”
    The students solved some problems and learned to manage their time better at the competition.
    “We all had to do research this year and truthfully it was amazing how fast we learned,” Goulet said. “After some research, we came up with many ideas and tried to apply them to the robot itself. After the trip every one could all agree on one thing. It was awesome. Every kid had fun and they all seemed to want to come again.”
Students’ thoughts
    The following is a collection of comments made by some of the students who participated in the competition.
    “It was fun, because we got to try it out and then fix our mistakes,” Dylan Jurson said.
    “I made a program and everyone said that we should use this one because when we tested it the program was successful,” said Nathaniel Stoddard.
    “We learned to use our time better, setting goals and time line to complete task with student input,” said Leigha Jurson
    “I would work harder,” Wiegand said of using his knowledge from this year to next. “I would use what we learned to improve our design.”