. . . The hardest job was
not helping when we
saw what we thought
“should” be done.
Richardson became the programmer,
telling the robot what to do and adjusting its movements by degrees in drag-and-drop blocks. Parker Browne and
Tyler Jackson ran the robot and adjusted
the field setup whenever “Destructo”—as
they named their robot—went off course
and plowed into the field animals.
Within the general theme of Food
Safety, each team was instructed to develop a specific focus. At the beginning,
our team started developing a program to
educate food service personnel about the
possibility of severe food allergies among
their customers. This project was suggested by a boy who has personal experience with food allergies. However, just
two weeks before the competition, we
learned that our project was not exactly
what the judges were looking for and we
had to switch gears at the last moment.
We were told that our project was
supposed to focus on a single food; we
were told to research related safety issues and then design an innovative way
to handle them. The boys had to learn
flexibility and how to handle frustration. They quickly decided to focus on
raspberries and came up with a 3-D
model of a refrigerator system to mist
botanical oils into a crisper in order to
easily clean them.
As could be expected, at the actual re-
gional competition our robot had a few
problems. However, we did very well
for first-time competitors, finishing just
behind some experienced teams. Even
more important, the boys were given a
special award for “inspirational work.”
During the competition, the boys ex-
plained both their original project and
the new one and were allowed to pres-
ent both of them. At some point, the
