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Houston, we have a solution

24/04/17

Tala students who designed a robot that fights leptospirosis participate in a competition in Texas.
Reading time: 4 minutes

The news that a group of high school students from Tala is in Houston, Texas, to participate in a robotics competition spread on Twitter in the last few days. Axel Cuendes, Belén Barreto and Nicolás Borges, along with teacher Alicia Ferrando, participated in the First Lego League World Festival, a global event that from Wednesday until today brought together more than 100 groups of young people between ten and 16 years old from more than 80 countries. The theme chosen for this year: animals and their allies.

 

Speaking to the newspaper from Houston, Ferrando said that the students' project began to take shape last year, in the programming and robotics workshop that she gives at the José Alonso Trelles high school in the city of Tala, Canelones. It is a space that is offered in the afternoon for students and it is not mandatory, that is, those who are really interested in the subject can participate. In any case, Ferrando said that robotics often operates as an excuse to get in touch with other issues; in this case, the daily life of the city.

 

The students worked with leptospira, the bacterium which generates leptospirosis, after confirming that in the city there were many cases of this disease, mainly due to the fact that the drainage system is by means of gutters, where the bacterium has been detected. In addition, the presence of rodents, carriers of leptospira, generates that when they enter a house they can infect pets, which also makes them transmitters of the virus. From an investigation to eliminate leptospira, the students discovered that the bacterium lives only in humid soils with a neutral pH. Therefore, by modifying the pH of the place, they were able to kill the bacterium; besides, while they worked with the chemistry teacher, they found that calcium hydroxide modifies the pH when it comes into contact with water. And unlike the poison usually used to kill rodents, if used in moderation, calcium hydroxide is not harmful to animals or people, in addition to the fact that it directly fights the bacteria. As a solution to the problem, they designed a robot made with Lego pieces, which is capable of applying the substance in the ditches. The group of students won first prize in the Programming and Robotics Olympics organized by Plan Ceibal, a competition with "the aim of disseminating, sharing and highlighting the best work in Robotics and Programming, promoting teamwork and integrating various subjects," according to its regulations.

 

Last year, more than 1,200 young people from all over the country came together to compete in the Olympics, organized into 230 teams, of which 180 were left to participate in all categories: primary (fourth, fifth and sixth years), basic cycle and second cycle (in high schools and UTU). Tala's project won first prize in the competition, followed by initiatives by students from San Luis high school and Rivera high school 6, in second and third place, respectively.

 

Further back

Ferrando recalled that the high school students, currently in their fifth and sixth years of high school, began attending the robotics workshops when they were in the first year. At that time they were given very simple programming tasks, but then the exercises became more complex, until, for example, they were able to program in Java language and design robots. The teacher pointed out that the students especially like to go to competitions because "that's where you learn the most"; first, by designing their own project, but also by observing the solutions shared by other teams of peers. "Working individually is impossible," she reflected.

 

Regarding the modality of work, she pointed out that the work is different from the traditional class, based on projects; in addition to this, students do not get a grade, so the evaluation consists of the comments made by the teacher. Many times, the involvement of the students in their projects leads them to spend several hours a week on them. For the project competing in the United States, they worked during December and February, working from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and sometimes even later.

 

The international robotics program in which they participate in Houston was born from the union of the companies First and Lego Group, and since 1998 seeks to motivate young people to pursue careers related to science, mathematics and technology. The goal is for students to learn to program robots using Lego Mindstorms technology and use them to solve a problem that affects society.

 

In addition to touring the facilities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the city's Engineering University, the Uruguayan students visited the Convention Center. There they had informative meetings and prepared a stand to present the project in the competition, in addition to answering questions from the visiting public, all in English, so they had to learn the language intensively. In the first instance they were evaluated by judges before whom they defended their project, and then another jury evaluated "the values" of the group, based on those that the organizers of the activity propose to develop in the competitions: "Inclusion, discovery, cooperation ['compete by collaborating'], respect, and teamwork". In a third instance of evaluation, they had to present the robot they designed for the competition and defend it from the point of view of mechanics and programming. Specifically, they had to explain how the robot was built and explain its strengths and weaknesses. On Thursday, the robotics competition took place: they were faced with different game fields in which the robot had to carry out different activities. As each mission carries a score, the students previously had to come up with a strategy to determine what activities the robot was able to do in a limited time, since the challenge is designed in such a way that there is not enough time for all the missions. Today the team will learn the results and will witness the end of the competition of categories with more advanced students, to which they will be able to aspire in the coming years.

 

Source: La Diaria

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