University to hold first Robo Games, 2nd annual Robotics Summer Camp

Robo Games will be held April 23 at La Sierra’s Alumni Pavilion and is open to students in grades 1 through 12. Participants may use any building materials including Legos or Meccano/Erector sets, and any microcontroller such as Arduino or Raspberry Pi. Robots must be pre-programmed to run autonomously in a timed game that requires moving colored balls into like-colored goals. Participants will compete in teams of up to five people in first and second rounds of competition. First place will be a $300 cash prize and a $3,000 La Sierra scholarship per team member.

The competition derives from talks computer science Chair Enoch Hwang has had with teachers, administrators and sponsors at several local schools about their computer programs and computer or robotic-related clubs.

“The sense that I got is the need for me to pull this special interest group of people together in one event where they can interact with others with the same interest. And one way to do that is to have a competition,” he said. “There are many elementary up to high school students who are interested in computers and robotics, but these classes are not taught at many of the schools, and so they have no formal way to learn these skills.”

The competition follows an inaugural robotics camp Hwang held at La Sierra last June attended by 36 youth with a waiting list of 40. This summer’s second annual robotics camp, designed for ages 9 and up, will be held Mon., June 19 through Fri., June 30. Slots are available during an afternoon session held from 1:30 – 4:30 p.m. Participants will learn robotics, logical thinking, computer programming and electronics through hands-on robot-building activities. The camp will conclude with a robot competition. Registration is $160 and includes an Arduino microprocessor kit for building robotic projects.

One of the main goals of the camps and the competition is to pique the interest of children and youth in pursuing computer science-related occupations, says Hwang.

“Robotics is a good jumping-off point to teach computational thinking skills because people, especially young children, are more interested in robots than writing computer programs,” Hwang said. “But in order to make the robots do what they do, they'll have to write programs.”

Robo Games will be held from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Further information and registration for Robo Games is available at lasierra.edu/robogames.