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Bellefontaine High School Team Kickin’ Bots member Reid Gleason, center, explains during Monday evening’s Bellefontaine Schools Board of Education meeting some of the design challenges he and teammates Dustin VanBuskirk, left, and Ryoma Kawakami, had to overcome when developing their robot, which they recently competed with at the Vex World Robotics competition in Louisville, Ky. (EXAMINER PHOTO | MANDY LOEHR)
Bellefontaine City Schools Board of Education members were treated at their Monday evening board of education meeting to a demonstration of the many capabilities of a robot developed by three Bellefontaine High School students who made an appearance at a world competition last month.
The BHS Team Kickin’ Bots of Reid Gleason, Ryoma Kawakami and Dustin VanBuskirk received 13th place out of 558 teams at the VEX Robotics World Competition April 19-23 in Louisville, Ky., as previously reported in the Examiner.
The pupils also finished in the highest placement in their division of the Ohio teams, and juniors Reid and Ryoma improved upon their performances at world competitions in 2016 and 2015.
The teams represented the top 1 percent of the 28,000 teams that compete around the world, their adviser Sandi Chervenak related.
They earned the spots to the international contest following their performance at the state competition earlier this year.
With a remote control in hand, Ryoma demonstrated how the team’s robot “Kickin’ Bot” can pick up items and also showed how it can lift itself up from a table while holding onto a human arm.
Reid noted that Kickin’ Bot utilizes a pneumatics system, or compressed air, to accomplish tasks. He also explained the many problem-solving issues that the team encountered throughout the building process.
“There are many constraints for our robot, including size, for the competition,” he said. “While there’s no weight limit, the heavier your robot is, the more power and torque you’ll need. Our robot weighs about 20 pounds.
Read complete BOE NEWS in Tuesday’s Examiner.
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