Marshall-Putnam 4-H Robotics Team takes home three awards during state contest

On April 16, Marshall-Putnam 4-H sent its robotics team to the Illinois State 4-H Robotics Competition for the first time in five years.

The Marshall-Putnam robotics team consisted of Logan Siegmann, Sam Nauman, Daphne Heeley, Gwen Heeley, Waylon Lindstrom, Lillian Lindstrom, Kale Lindstrom and Cooper Hattan.

The team, consisting of youth from Marshall and Putnam counties, began learning the basics of robotic design and programming last fall through a series of guided learning days and open lab work days.

The members learned how to make a robot follow a printed line, worked with gearing to modify motor speeds, programmed the robots to interface with different sensors, calculated the math involved in determining distances and covered many other topics.

As the holiday season approached, the team was then excited to learn that the statewide challenge had been issued for the spring competition and that the theme of the competition would be “SpaceBot Mission Command,” a theme based on recent advances in aerospace and space exploration technologies.

The team selected their challenges from a list of fifteen themed missions and ended up settling on a list of seven, five of intermediate difficulty and two of basic difficulty, to work towards.

Between January and April, the team worked around four evenings per month designing, engineering, building, and programming to accomplish their goal.

Through many design changes, much programming and reprogramming and no small amount of cooperation, the team arrived at a competition design consisting of six of their original seven mission goals.

For the state-wide competition, the team found themselves up against 13 other teams from across Illinois.

The team was judged on their technical design, their ability to work together as a team and the ability of their robot to complete a “table performance” of the missions for which it was designed.

After nearly perfect table performance, the team waited anxiously to find out how they had done compared to the other teams in attendance.

As the trophy winners were called out, the members of the Marshall-Putnam 4-H Robotics team were thrilled to find that they had earned three trophies for their efforts: Best Robot Design-Advanced, Most Creative Design-Advanced, and Best Table Performance-Advanced.

The staff at University of Illinois Extension Marshall-Putnam 4-H would like to congratulate all of the team members on their performance this year and to also thank all of the parents for their involvement and efforts in seeing their youth succeed.

For more information or questions about Marshall-Putnam 4-H STEM, contact Aaron Lindstrom, 4-H STEM/STEAM Program Coordinator with University of Illinois Extension, at (309) 364-2356 or by email at ALind83@illinois.edu.