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Robotics

At the March 3 Town Board meeting, Councilwoman Jane Bonner recognized a group of Rocky Point High School Technology students who created a prosthetic hand for Anun Suastika, a six-year-old Indonesian boy who was born with no fingers on his right hand. Anan’s father made a plea on a website called E-name for someone to help make a prosthetic hand for his boy. 

Mr. Schumacher, passionate about teaching students the technology skills that they can use in many career fields, happened upon e-NABLE, an organization with volunteer members who use open-source technology and 3-D printers to provide free prosthetic hands for children and adults. He thought it would be a great way to blend technology and humanity into a project for his students and guided them as they built the prosthetic hand using the school’s 3-D printer. 

The students worked during free periods and after school to design and assemble the 3-D parts into a Phoenix V-3 prosthetic hand. As traditional prosthetics normally cost thousands of dollars and need to be replaced as children grow, the production of a printed Phoenix V-3 prosthetic hand is much more inexpensive because of its design: It simply relies on a person’s functional wrist and uses the palm to push against the device so the fingers close when the wrist is bent.

“It is not every day that high school students can make such a big impact on a person’s life, but these students did just that. I thank Mr. Schumacher and his Technology class for taking on the challenge to improve Anun’s quality of life,” said Councilwoman Jane Bonner. 

“We are grateful to Mr. Schumacher and these students for this project that will have a profound effect on a boy’s life,” Rocky Point School District Superintendent of Schools Dr. Scott O’Brien said. “The enthusiasm and passion shown by this committed group is inspiring to others in our school district, learning that in our classrooms they too can make a difference in the global community.

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Rocky Point senior Kyle Markland, second from left, helps build a robot with his high school robotics team Quantum Chaos. Photo from Lori Markland

By Kyle Barr

Even at 17, Rocky Point High School senior Kyle Markland is a renaissance man.

Markland is a scientist and a musician, an engineer and an artist. This past year, he competed in several regional and national science fairs with his project on improving GPS technologies in autonomous cars. On May, 6 he played double bass for the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall.

Rocky Point senior Kyle Markland hoists up a championship trophies with his high school robotics team, Quantum Chaos. Photo from Lori Markland

“The balance of his technical skills and his creativity — how he’s able to excel in both areas at such a high level is tremendous,” Rocky Point High School Principal Susan Crossan said.

In 2013 Markland took a trip to the First LEGO League World Festival in St. Louis, Missouri. One of the first stops he made was to the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, where he saw pictures and models of the wondrous inventions of one of the world’s most famous engineers and painters. It inspired something within himself.

“It really took me back how intelligent he was — a lot of his engineering stuff, but also how he was an artist, with all his paintings like the Mona Lisa — he stands out in so many different areas,” Markland said. “It’s something that I want to do for myself — stand out and do the best I can in a lot of different arenas.”

Just like how da Vinci was an inventor and engineer, Markland too has a knack for understanding the way things work, and expressed his engineering skills through LEGO Mindstorms.

Mindstorms is a branch of LEGO where technic blocks are used to program robots that can perform any number of functions. The senior took an interest in robotics when he was in 5th grade, saving up birthday money for several years before buying his first Mindstorms kit.

Rocky Point senior Kyle Markland performed with his bass at Carnegie Hall. Photo from Lori Markland

In 2014 he created the YouTube channel Builderdude35, where he regularly posts tutorials and videos of his LEGO creations. Markland has over 14,000 subscribers, and said he regularly receives questions and requests for help from people all over the world.

“The tutorials were a way of sharing my own experience that I learned through [school] or at home,” Markland said.

In April he published the book “Building Smart LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Robots,” in which he highlights six of his unique robotics projects — all of which he built and coded. One of his flagship creations is a quirky interactive robot named “Grunt” that will eat different colored LEGO blocks and react differently to each one. The robot will respond to when waved at, and even stick out a small LEGO claw to shake your hand.

Markland’s mother, Lori, recalled her son marveling at the way things worked even at a young age.

“His passion was cars, building, robotics, machinery,” she said. “When we brought him to a cotton candy machine, he was looking at all the moving parts underneath it.”

The senior does all this with an incredibly busy schedule. He spends most of his time travelling, whether for scientific research, music or robotics, and still finds the time for schoolwork. To Markland, music is his most calming influence. It helps to settle his mind. He said the music is also not only just for him.

“I want to feel like I’m using my time for something bigger than myself,” Markland said. “I want to feel accomplished. The channel is a way to teach people, the book is a way to teach people; my music is something that makes people happy.”

Rocky Point senior Kyle Markland holds up a book he published on building robots. Photo from Rocky Point school district

Markland will graduate salutatorian of his class. He was accepted into Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and California Institute of Technology, and chose MIT not just because he sees it as the most prestigious, but because the admissions officer personally called to congratulate him.

“[It’s] crazy, because they don’t really do that,” Markland said.

Next week Markland will be travelling to participate at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he will face off against 1,800 students from over 75 different countries.

“From the get-go Kyle has been very self-motivated,” Markland’s science teacher and mentor at Nancy Hunter said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a student who matches his ability define a problem, figure out how he’s going to go about solving a problem, and does it all.”

While the science fair sounds daunting, the student has been methodical in his preparation. In times of stress, he said he thinks of something his cousin, a soldier in the U.S Marines, told him: “He told me, ‘there’s nothing more powerful than one who plans his work and works his plan.’”

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Rocky Point Middle School's Robo Eagles robotics team. Photo from Rocky Point school district

At Rocky Point Middle School, LEGO-building is serious business.

The school’s two robotics teams — Radical Robotix and Robo Eagles — will compete in the 14th annual FIRST LEGO League Long Island championship tournament in Longwood this March after taking home a total of three awards in the qualifying tournament Jan. 20.

Rocky Point Middle School’s Radical Robotic team. Photo from Rocky Point school district

“Both teams have worked very hard from the beginning of the school year and to be recognized for these efforts is outstanding,” club adviser Mark Moorman said. “I was thrilled that both teams qualified.”

During the high-stakes competition, held at Great Hollow Middle School in Nesconset, the Rocky Point students — grades 6 through 8 — squared off against 23 other robotics teams from across the region with programmable LEGO Mindstorm robots they started building in October.

Under this year’s theme of hydrodynamics, the students applied math, science and technology skills to build robots with the ability to complete water-related tasks, such as replacing water pipes and connecting water pumps, on a table-top playing field.

The teams had to present research projects identifying a problem and finding a solution related to the theme. During the tournament, judges evaluated the students based on teamwork and technical skills, as well as “gracious professionalism,” according to Moorman.

Robo Eagles:

Misha Zaslavsky

Leila Riedl

Zach Accetta

Alex Rosenberg

Marco Tanza

Felicity Monaghan

Oskar Chorzepa

As the results show, Rocky Point certainly made a splash.

The Robo Eagles received the Alliance Award for scoring the highest point total on the robot table and the Judges Award for “unique efforts, performance or dynamics.” The Radical Robotix took home a project research award for its desalination aviation life vest.

For the project, Radical Robotix determined that while each seat on an airplane is equipped with a life vest in case of emergency water landing, once a passenger is in the water, specifically seawater, he or she is left on their own to survive while waiting for rescue. The students developed a water bottle, attached to the vest, that would filter the salt and bacteria out of seawater and turn it into drinking water.

“We were so excited to win the project research award and qualify for the next tournament,” said Radical Robotix member seventh-grader Eve Hald. “It was fun getting to see our robot compete and to compete in the tasks that judges gave us.”

Radical Robotix:

Jake Bazata

C.J. McMillen

Sola Matsumoto

Eve Hald

Nick O’Shea

Maddy Knopke

Moorman said the two teams had a balanced mix of veteran robotics members and “newbies” — Radical Robotix has six members, Robo Eagles has seven. While he said members of the robotics club meet twice a week every other week and knew what to expect, it didn’t make the tournament any less chaotic.

“It seemed like when we were done with one aspect, like the Robot round, we had to move straight to another aspect, like the project presentation,” he said. “It was all happening very fast.”

Back at the middle school, Principal Scott O’Brien expressed his pride in the club’s performance.

“The students and advisers of the Rocky Point Middle School robotics teams work tirelessly throughout the year to compete in tournaments,” O’Brien said in a statement. “We are so proud of the robotics teams for qualifying for the championship tournament this March. Best of luck to both teams and their advisers.”

Members of the Rocky Point robotics team GearHeadz, Clayton Mackay, Rex Alex, Jade Pinkenburg, Julius Condemi and Jen Bradley with their first completed FRC robot at the North Shore Youth Council. Photo from Chris Pinkenburg

After building a robot for six weeks, all the GearHeadz wanted to do was sleep.

The Rocky Point-based robotics team had finished building its first machine used to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition, and the teammates admit moving up from the FIRST Tech Challenge league was more work than even they imagined, but the team is ready for competition.

“Looking at the FTC robots we built compared to the FRC robot, it’s not even close to being the same,” said programmer Jade Pinkenburg, a junior at Rocky Point High School. “The only similarity is the aluminum plate base. Everything else we had to learn ourselves. It was complicated, but really enjoyable learning all the new elements.”

“It’s really professional-grade robotics. The control modules and modems — it’s not toys anymore.”

—Chris Pinkenburg

His father, Chris Pinkenburg, the team’s coach, said he’s thrilled to compete at Hofstra University March 31 after 42 days of hard work learning and building from 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 3 to 7 p.m. on weekends — especially because the league change has been six years in the making.

“It’s been an interesting road so far,” he said. “We were a small team with a lot to do. It was six long weeks, but I’m really proud of the kids. They really pulled their weight and everybody contributed. It was a great experience, and the kids learned a lot.”

Upon receiving the kit with materials weeks ago from FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, an international robotics competition sanctioning body, the head coach said it was like Christmas, looking at all of the new material they were to use for their machine. But the team quickly realized that a lot of ingenuity and creativity was going to be needed to build a robot from all of the foreign parts it began to categorize.

The three challenges this year, with the theme of steamworks, are to collect fuel represented by green balls and use pressure to propel them to a target, retrieve and deliver gears to a rotor, and climb a rope.

The team prioritized their focus based on difficulty and point value.

“At first we thought we knew what we were doing, but it turns out we had no idea what we were doing,” Jade Pinkenburg said laughing. He explained how he and his teammates had to put in a lot of time teaching themselves a new code language and how to use the parts to design the robot to do what they wanted it to. “It was six weeks of day after day designing, building and coding, plus homework, so it was a lot of work, but we prioritized to get it done. I’m proud of what we’ve done as a team.”

He said he was also inspired by the challenges brought on by the new league.

Other members of the Rocky Point GearHeadz Alek Zahradka, Travis Ferrie and Julia Jacobellis. Photos from Chris Pinkenburg

“There’s more stuff to do and things that are interesting and applicable to the real world,” he said. “It builds on concepts we learn in school in physics and seeing how it works in the real world is interesting.”

Scoring a 1570 out of 1600 on the SATs and a perfect 36 on the ACTs, it’s no wonder he was able to combat the problems the team continued to face. But to the student, it’s all about staying interested and motivated.

“My quick learning helped, but it’s more about the motivation,” Pinkenburg said. “If you want to be successful, you can be.”

His teammate Jen Bradley, a sophomore, said the six weeks to build the 120-pound robot were intense, but a great experience.

“I think it’s good to have a general knowledge of simple machines, basic physics and mathematics and programming because in this day and age everything is becoming modernized,” she said. “Having this knowledge will help up, but it’s also just interesting and it’s fun for us.”

The GearHeadz continued to solve problem after problem. First, Rocky Point sophomore Alek Zahradka and junior Travis Ferrie got to work building the robot and its attachments. Unlike in the FIRST LEGO league, FLL, another league the team took part in last year, where you can only use parts made by Lego, in FRC you can use any part that’s available to the public as long as it’s not dangerous, which Bradley said made the process more exciting.

The team used rubber surgical tubes to sling around an axel and pull balls into the shooter. Two wheels accelerate the balls toward the target. It will be 10 feet high, and although Chris Pinkenburg said it is unclear if they can reach the mark, building the robot in a space in Yaphank and testing it inside the basement of the North Shore Public Library, he’s confident in his team’s capabilities.

“We can hit the ceiling in the library in the meantime,” he said, laughing.

“I say it’s the hardest fun you’ll ever have…We’re not engineers, but we built something.”

—Jade Pinkenburg

Rocky Point freshman Julius Condemi then worked on getting the gears moving. With 1 minute, 45 seconds to complete the tasks, Pinkenburg said he was impressed seeing his team member placing five or six gears on the peg.

“Julius must play a lot of video games, which helps,” he said. “He’s a great driver, and the robot is very agile. In the end we managed to hang the gears and climb the rope.”

The robot is now sealed in a bag inside Pinkenburg’s living room, but the GearHeadz are allowed to continue working on the attachments. The coach said it couldn’t have been made possible without the support of the community. Most team meetings were held at the North Shore Youth Council but also the Rocky Point VFW, Rocky Point Civic Association and local residents offered assistance. He said with the help and his team’s dedication, the rookie robot is comparable to many others in the league — even with eight members, compared to other teams like Longwood, that has 60 kids on the team. Rocky Point senior Clayton Mackay and freshmen Rex Alex and Julia Jacobellis round out the roster.

“The kids really focused, worked well under pressure and got the job done,” the coach said. “It’s really professional-grade robotics. The control modules and modems — it’s not toys anymore. This stuff is used in the industry to build robots. It’s on another level.”

His son said he can’t wait to show off what the GearHeadz have produced at the competition.

“It’s been an incredible experience unlike anything I’ve ever done before,” he said. “I say it’s the hardest fun you’ll ever have, and it’ll be cool to show what we’ve done in front of such a large audience. It’s crazy to see a bunch of teenagers with free time on the weekends building an inspiring and massive robot. We’re not engineers, but we built something.”

North Atlantic Industries in Bohemia and a Rookie grant from the Argosy Foundation made the team’s competition this season possible. For more information about the team, to join or to donate, visit the team’s website at www.rockypointroboticsclub.com.

Huntington middle school students smile with math teachers Christine Lofaro, far left, and Susan Llanes, far right. Photo by Kevin Redding

Huntington students taught the community a thing or two about computer science and coding at a board of education meeting Dec. 12.

Sixth-grader Sarah Crowin, along with fifth-graders Samantha McGloin, Ben Edgar McNerney and Uma Shtrom, showed those in attendance how they were able to make “math move” and come to life in creating their own mazes and games.

They explained how this new passion has helped them in other areas.

McGloin, a student at Jack Abrams STEM Magnet School, said coding helped her become a better problem solver.

“When you’re coding, it’s all trial and error,” she said at the meeting. “If something doesn’t work, there’s no pop-up explaining what to do … you have to know your lines of code and what you wrote to see what you did wrong and learn from it. It helps with perseverance because you have to work on something and there’s no such thing as overnight success.”

She said coding has taught her to put all of her effort into something — otherwise it won’t work out the way you want it to.

Shtrom, also a student at Jack Abrams, said coding changed the way she thinks.

“When I see video games like Minecraft or Temple Run, I think about the coding conditions behind the game,” she said. “Coding had also helped me to better understand math concepts … like grid coordinates … x and y coordinates … and angles.”

Back in October, students at Woodhull Intermediate School and the STEM Magnet School started using the platform called kidOYO, or Kid On Your Own, in the classroom to create coding scripts and explore learning outcomes in the fields of computer science, engineering and entrepreneurship education.

This program, which Huntington has implemented in grades kindergarten through eighth, encourages students to demonstrate knowledge and problem solving skills through various programming tools.

Students of all ages within the district are able to access kidOYO from home as well as school, and so far they said they’ve been excited to learn and utilize this new language of code.

“It’s wonderful to see students engaged in this,” Christine Lofaro, a Huntington Response to Intervention math teacher, and one of the facilitators of the program said.

She said even though not all the students participating in the program are necessarily heavy academic students in terms of math and science, they love to do this and it’s never a chore to get them involved.

“I was in a kindergarten class on Friday and was thinking, “How am I going to do this with kindergarten students?” she said. “They were totally in it, totally in the game and excited, right from the get go.”

She and fellow Huntington RTI math teacher Susan Llanes had the opportunity to attend the “kidOYO Summer Experience” at Stony Brook University for three days in July and while there, they trained alongside computer science instructors and learned a lot about the benefits of the program, especially for young students.

They immediately brainstormed how they were going to bring this back to their school.

Lofaro and Llanes emailed principals and the district’s Director of Elementary Mathematics Marybeth Robinette about how to roll this out as soon as school was back in session in the fall.

Robinette said every 21st century student should have a chance to learn about algorithms, how to make an app, and learn how the internet works, just as they should know what photosynthesis and H2O are.

“Right now, there’s no expectation in our schools that students should even have a basic understanding of these concepts, even though they’re driving a large part of our society,” said Robinette.

The director of elementary mathematics said computer science is foundational and affects every field in residents’ lives. Whether it’s navigation systems on the road or computing breakthroughs in health care, every single day ,the trend of coding is growing in every single industry.

She explained that right now computing jobs are the number one source of new wages in the U.S.

“There are more than 500,000 job openings [in this field], but we’re not graduating kids from college with computer science degrees,” Robinette said. “One of the reasons is that kids don’t really know how computers work and think it’s really difficult and scary. But through kidOYO … we’re showing that all kids can participate in this.”

The Rocky Point GearHeadz with coach Chris Pinkenburg, a physicist at Brookhaven National Lab. File photo by Desirée Keegan

“It’s finally happening,” award-winning Rocky Point-area robotics coach Chris Pinkenburg said. “After six years in the making we will have a FIRST Robotics Competition team.”

This was the goal for him and his GearHeadz since day one. The team competed in lower divisions in the FIRST LEGO League to build experience and grow to be able to compete in the higher-level league.

In February, the team was crowned Second Place Champions in the FLL Long Island Championship Tournament and went on to represent the area in the North American Open Invitational Championship Tournament in May. The GearHeadz competed against 74 teams — all regional and state champions from the U.S. and Canada, as well as international guests from Germany and South Korea.

The team’s hard work paid off, as the GearHeadz claimed second place in programming in its final year as an FLL team. This award recognizes a team that utilizes outstanding programming principles, including clear, concise and reusable code that allows their robot to perform challenge missions autonomously and consistently. The team also placed in fifth place overall.

“It’s very heartening to see kids involved in this kind of work. We’re proud of what they have been able to accomplish and we wish them more success in the future.”

— Jane Alcorn

It is the second championship win in a row for two members, and the third championship win for two of the founding members.

As a result of its continued growth, the GearHeadz gained a new science connection.

The GearHeadz now have affiliation with the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe in Shoreham, and the future collaboration will help the team as it ventures into the FRC.

A more advanced team needs more space than the Pinkenburgs’ basement, which is where the team currently practices and builds.

“Space is the biggest problem, so I approached the Tesla Science Center in April or May to see if they would be interested to host a robotics team,’ Pinkenburg said. “They are absolutely in favor of this. It also fits well into their plans for the science center.”

The Tesla Science Center, while currently working on turning some of the lab into a museum, is also working on hosting space for local community groups and an incubator where scientists can conduct experiments, build and share ideas. While the space is not going to be ready for this upcoming season, which begins in January, the plan is to move to permanent housing next season.

“With the Tesla Science Center we have a long-term future,” Pinkenburg said.

The center’s president, Jane Alcorn, hopes the partnership will give the team more visibility and  said it’s exactly the kind of thing the site wants to foster and work with and would like the team to one day be Tesla’s GearHeadz.

“Since Tesla is one of the fathers of robotics it seems very appropriate,” she said. Nikola Tesla also invented the first remote control. “Part of our mission is to have groups like this.”

The Rocky Point-based robotics team, GearHeadz, after competing in the North American Open Invitational Tournament. File photo from Chris Pinkenburg
The Rocky Point-based robotics team, GearHeadz, after competing in the North American Open Invitational Tournament. File photo from Chris Pinkenburg

But besides space, an FRC team needs more money. That’s where Bohemia-based North Atlantic Industries came in. The organization contacted Pinkenburg after FIRST pointed it in Rocky Point’s direction. The company offered to sponsor the GearHeadz with up to $6,000 dollars in matching funds.

“This was really great news,” Pinkenburg said. “It was the breakthrough we needed.”

In order to compete in 2017, the GearHeadz must raise at least $15,000 to purchase equipment and pay the FRC fees. The six-week season begins in January, but the team must come up with the funding by mid-November. So far, the group has raised close to $3,000, and the matching grant enables the team to pay for the $6,000 registration fee that is due this month.

The registration comes with a robot base kit and one competition, which will take place from the end of March to the beginning of April at Hofstra University.

“We still need additional material for the robot — you are allowed to spend $4,000 but my guess is that it’ll be around $1,500,” Pinkenburg said. “We need tools — we have some promises for donations in that department already — and we would like to participate in a second competition, which is another $4,000. That’s where the $15,000 comes from. If we match the money from North Atlantic Industries we’ll be close to this.”

Pinkenburg said from his team’s past experience he believes the GearHeadz are well-prepared to have a good start in its new division. Since it’s a community-based team — not limited by school district boundaries when accepting new members — he hopes that the team can continue to grow.

“I hope that this will turn into something where many kids from the North Shore communities profit from,” he said.

Information about the team and a sponsor form may be found on the GearHeadz’ website at www.rockypointroboticsclub.com. The group also set up a GoFundMe site: www.gofundme.com/Gearheadz. 

“We’re excited to see what this robotics club can do, especially since they’re doing so well,” Alcorn said. “It’s very heartening to see kids involved in this kind of work. We’re proud of what they have been able to accomplish and we wish them more success in the future.”

GearHeadz bring home two awards from California

The GearHeadz robotics team displays its national trophy at Legoland in California. Photo from Chris Pinkenburg

What started with a small group of kids in a Long Island basement ended with cheers when the Rocky Point-area GearHeadz robotics team ran down the isle at Legoland in California to collect a national trophy.

“It was the greatest feeling ever,” GearHeadz coach Chris Pinkenburg said of how well his team produced on such a grand stage, to receive a fifth-place robot game and second-place programming award. “I’m extremely proud of them. They’re a very independent, unselfish team that can figure out a lot of problems on their own.”

The team competed in the FIRST LEGO League Long Island championship tournament back in February and was crowned second-place champion. From there, it competed on the national stage against 74 teams, including regional and state champions from the United States and Canada, as well as international guests from Germany and South Korea.

Each year, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, which was founded in 1989, presents a theme under which teams solve real-world problems and build and program a robot to compete in missions.

The theme this time around was Trash Trek, so students had to present a project that could be the solution to an environmental hazard. The GearHeadz tried over 20 times and eventually came up with the right recipe for biodegradable bags that would limit the mass death of sea turtles and other marine life from accidental ingestion of plastic.

The GearHeadz’s robot base and some of its attachments used to complete missions. Photo by Desirée Keegan
The GearHeadz’s robot base and some of its attachments used to complete missions. Photo by Desirée Keegan

“We’ve worked together well as a team,” said Pinkenburg’s 14-year-old son Jade. “We’ve solved a lot of problems and succeeded on the Long Island and national stage.”

Speaking of problems, his team ran into a big one at nationals.

“The first two rounds went really, really bad,” Chris Pinkenburg said. “We got back from the second round and sat down together to try to figure out what’s wrong with our robot. It behaved very differently from previous times.”

Recently turned 14-year-old Jen Bradley discovered a bad cable, when she started wiggling it and noticed that the sensor reading was changing. Thankfully it’s only your best round that counts, and the team had spent so much time fixing its robot that it had minutes to get ready to perform for the third time.

“Everything depended on that last round,” Pinkenburg said.

The robot performed well, which earned the team fifth place.

“We have a lot of smart people here that work really hard,” 14-year-old Rex Alex said. “We put in the time and effort and we get results. It was a big stage, a new experience for me, and we had the pressure on us, but we rose to the occasion.”

Bradley and the Pinkenburg bunch had been there before but had never garnered a national award.

“We’re finally one of the best teams in the country. That’s nice,” Pinkenburg said, laughing. “Hard work does pay off. It’s a total team win.”

It was the culmination of five years of hard work while learning and striving to improve.

For 13-year-old Julius Condemi, it was interesting to meet and compete against so many different types of teams.

“It was really cool to see everyone’s methods of finishing the missions to get high scores,” he said. “The competitions are energetic and it’s busy, but it’s a lot of fun.”

The GearHeadz group even works with other teams to help, something Pinkenburg said makes the program unique.

“It’s competing against technical problems, not other teams,” he said. “The kids show gracious professionalism when helping other teams. The camaraderie is good and I can see the progress. It’s an amazing gift to watch that and to help them on their way.”

The GearHeadz are hoping to move up to a higher level of competition. Photo by Desirée Keegan
The GearHeadz are hoping to move up to a higher level of competition. Photo by Desirée Keegan

As the kids are nearing the end of the age limit to compete in the FLL, the team is working to raise a minimum of $15,000 to compete in the FIRST Robotics Challenge, in which they will design, build, program and operate 120-pound robots to compete in floor games.

To be a part of this league is why Pinkenburg first created a team. A perk to being a part of this league is that it offers scholarships.

“Boeing, Grumman, Intel, they hire you afterward,” he said. “They see it as a means to attract talent and make them known to talent.”

Clayton Mackay, also 14 years old, mainly builds attachments for the base of the robot, which could involve adding pieces that compress air or use springs, to complete the different missions. He was a friend to a lot of the teammates, like Julius and Rex, before joining the team, which he said has helped them be able to work together to be able to compete at a higher level. It also wouldn’t have been possible without their coach, who has been a huge source of knowledge.

“He’s a really nice guy who knows so much,” Mackay said. “He’s a great coach. I’ve really enjoyed being a part of this team.”

Jade has learned a lot from and about his father during the process, and Pinkenburg has seen his son mature during the process.

“It’s brought out the best in him,” he said. “The social skills, dealing with the other teams, he’s really progressed tremendously. They all learned a lot about engineering and I see the personal development as the kids grow and evolve.”

Bradley said being on the team has been the highlight of grade school.

“It’s always been a big part of my life,” she said of robotics. “It’s really incredible. I’ve learned a lot about perseverance, about teamwork. I’ve made a lot of friendships while learning a lot.”

For more information about the team or to help donate to help them reach the next stage of the competition, visit the team’s website at www.rockpointroboticsclub.com.

The Maritime Explorium children’s museum in Port Jefferson hosted the Eastern Long Island Mini Maker Faire on June 4, bringing innovators from all over and loads of fun stuff for kids and adults to check out.

The fair filled up the museum, the harborfront park and all three floors of the Village Center in Port Jefferson.

The Comsewogue middle school robotics team poses with coaches Steven Nielsen and Jennifer Caltagirone. Photo by Alex Petroski
Steven Nielsen shows off the creation of the Robotic Raccoons, Comsewogue's middle school team. Photo by Alex Petroski
Steven Nielsen shows off the creation of the Robotic Raccoons, Comsewogue’s middle school team. Photo by Alex Petroski

Comsewogue’s John F. Kennedy Middle School robotics team captured the Long Island Championship in the FIRST LEGO Robotics Competition at Longwood High School on Feb. 28, competing against about 150 other teams. They will be moving on to nationals in Missouri in April.

The board of education honored the team for its achievement at the board’s meeting on Monday.

“I think it’s fantastic,” Superintendent Joe Rella said in an interview. “They’ve been working on this project for a while, and that’s great that they have that interest.”

The Robotic Raccoons team, coached by Steven Nielsen and Jennifer Caltagirone, is collecting bottles and cans as a means of fundraising for their trip to Missouri. Anyone who would like to help should bring their recyclables to the middle school’s main entrance lobby.