Maciejewski Coaches Students to First Place in 'Mission Mars' Robotics Tournament
 |
| The four-student team from Ridgeview Classical School show off their first-place ribbons, medals and Lego trophy. The team was coached by CSU Electrical and Computer Engineering department head Tony Maciejewski. |
Tony Maciejewski, head of Electrical and Computer Engineering
at Colorado State University, coached a student team from Ridgeview Classical
School in Fort Collins to a first-place state tournament victory in robotics
performance last Saturday. The students competed at Steinhauer Fieldhouse on
the Colorado School of Mines campus in Golden. The four-person Ridgeview Classical
team is one of 4,200 teams in 12 countries that competed in the FIRST (For Inspiration
and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League competitions on Dec.6.
 |
|
The students guide an autonomous robot through obstacles on a simulated Mars surface. |
The competition, sponsored by Lockheed Martin and organized by the nonprofit
group ColoradoFIRST, is geared at making science and technology fun for kids.
The 2003 "Mission Mars" challenged students to explore the obstacles
engineers and scientists face in designing technology for the extreme conditions
of the Red Planet.
 |
| The Ridgeview Classical team was one of
20 teams - each with up to 10 members who range in age from 9 to 14 - who
competed in the tournament on Dec. 6. |
"The FIRST LEGO robotics competitions are an excellent way to expose children
to the excitement and challenges of engineering. They require the kids to analyze
problems, develop specifications, brainstorm about possible solutions, evaluate
different designs, and test, test, test - all the things that real engineers
do," said Maciejewski.
Read the Denver Post article online for more information on the student competition or visit the CSU Electrical and Computer Engineering website to learn more about robotics at Colorado State University.
 |
 |
| Two of the robots the Ridgeview Classical School team used in the simulation (above and left). |