While most sports and extracurricular school activities have resumed their pre-COVID activities, the Robotics Club has not. There have been no Arizona Interscholastic Association sponsored robotics events since the pandemic began, but Mary McDonald is still guiding students to build and create their own robots at Fountain Hills Middle School.

“I enjoy how much we work together to build these awesome robots,” fourth grade student Vivian Thomas said. “Knowing that we have all these tools and items to use, we can use our imagination to create basically anything we want. We can make a robot look like a fish, and I just enjoy how much freedom we have to build what we want.”

The club hasn’t built a fish robot yet, but one girl built an alligator robot, and Thomas and her friend are currently working on a cat robot. Without tournaments, the club members have more freedom and creativity with their designs. Thomas and most other club members are new to the program. It’s been two years since the last tournament, and only a few students can speak on the differences.

“It’s definitely been weird,” eighth-grader Milo Andree said. “Now it’s a little more decorative sometimes, but there’s plenty of things to do.”

Andree started robotics in the second grade and is very knowledgeable about the field. He was part of an award-winning robotics team in 2017-18 that went on to compete at the Vex National Robotics competition in Iowa, and he’s been to state championships a couple of times already in his young career.

According to Andree, tournament regulations change regularly, but teams are typically given a kit and are tasked to assemble a robot to complete a challenge in a 4’x8’ square. In Andree’s first tournament, his team’s robot had to stack and organize objects of different colors in less than a minute.

Without regulations to prepare for, the club has used and modified robot kits. Sometimes they use the book instructions or look up online tutorials, and now they are starting to go off script.

“We started off by building by specs, kind of how you’d do Lego,” McDonald said. “Now they are taking those builds and breaking them down and customizing it. That’s where it's getting really creative for them. It’s been a little more fun, too.”

Some students went straight into unscripted design. Fifth-grader Ethan Rogers has had an interest in robots for years and joined the club this year. Rogers started with a claw robot, similar to a crane. Club members also built a tank robot without blueprints, and soon they will learn how to program the robots to move on their own.

The kids learn both electrical and mechanical lessons at club meetings on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. The robots run on lithium-ion batteries and are remote controlled, but they have ports to connect with a computer. Andree said the robots can be programmed through languages like Python or Blockly.

The students use Blockly because it is a simple drag and drop programming language. Python is a high-level text-based programming language the students may encounter later in college if they pursue computer science or software engineering.

“My favorite part is that we’re working with electricity,” Thomas said. “This is a starting out for some of us. If we were to be engineers, we’ll have to use electricity.”

The Robotics Club hasn’t been the same since COVID began, but the club members are happy to learn and excited to challenge themselves. McDonald plans to host a Robotics Night this April, and she will set up a competition from the 2016-17 year so the students will get real tournament experience.

McDonald will also have a special guest from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Unit come and show kids an example of robotics in real life later this year. The date is subject to change, but as it stands, McDonald has that visit set for March 9 at 2:30 p.m.

The Fountain Hills High School robotics club has a storied history, and the future looks bright. In 2014, the high school team won the state championship and then won an award for the most creative engineering at the Vex World Robotics competition. While tournament experience is hard to replicate for new members, there is no doubt the Falcons are going to build some creative robots when tournaments eventually return.