8
Wednesday, January 11, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Robotics team headed to state
By Sue Stafford
Correspondent
Sisters Coder Cows robot-
ics team is headed to the state
competition next weekend,
January 14–15, at Liberty
High School in Hillsboro.
Sisters Middle School
sixth-graders Matthew Riehle
and Bodie Dachtler, and ele-
mentary school fourth-graders
Cooper Merrill and Micah
Dachtler, encouraged by their
coach Meghan Flaherty, have
been working since early
September to build and pro-
gram their robot.
Flaherty has coached
Matthew and Bodie for the
last three years, with Cooper
and Micah starting this school
year.
“I have coached the team
since the beginning… I have
zero experience or possibly
negative experience. I basi-
cally answer every question
with ‘Google it’,” Flaherty
admits.
Flaherty’s sons are Bodie
and Micah.
“I am a social worker who
has zero knowledge about
robotics or programming.
I provide a meeting space,
food, email coordination, and
some team-building activities
that are none tech,” she said.
“Spencer Bordonaro and
David Novotny (David is
at Redmond Proficiency
Academy and Spencer does
online school through Sisters
High School) are on the First
Tech Challenge team (for
grades 7-12) and have men-
tored our team since its incep-
tion. They provide feedback,
suggestions, questions and
technical support, but they
are not allowed to touch the
computer or the robot. The
team has to do all of that,”
explained Flaherty.
The boys meet weekly at
Flaherty’s house. Since only
one boy can program at a
time, they each come over one
or two additional times each
week to complete personal-
ized assignments.
“Always save,” said
Cooper Merrill, the new-
est and youngest member on
the team, a lesson he learned
the hard way. After spending
hours programming his mis-
sion, all his work was lost due
to not pressing save. The team
worked together to rewrite
the mission before the tour-
nament, as the other missions
depended on it.
“But the initial shock was
hard,” recalled Flaherty.
All of the volunteers at
the state competition are Intel
employees, (Intel has facili-
ties in Hillsboro). Sixty teams
will be attending, all of whom
had to place in the top three
at their regional qualifying
tournament. The Coder Cows
placed third in the eastern
Oregon regional tournament
held in December at Mountain
View High School in Bend.
They also won the Robot
Design Award.
The First Lego League
is an international program
whose mission is to inspire
the science and technology
leaders of tomorrow, who
are students age 9 to 16.
Worldwide there are 255,000
participants at all levels who
make up 32,000 teams, each
with a robot, participating in
1,464 events in 88 countries.
Each year in August, a
Global Challenge is released
to encourage students all over
the world to think like scien-
tists and engineers by choos-
ing and solving a real-world
Winter Blues?
Low Energy?
Cold Hands?
There are simple
things you can do
that are very helpful.
problem related to the overall
topic for that year. They also
design, build, test, and pro-
gram an autonomous robot
using LEGO MINDSTORM
technology to solve a set of
missions in the Robot Game.
They operate under the core
values of celebrating discov-
ery, teamwork, and gracious
professionalism.
The boys have to decide
what missions they want to
attempt and which might be
too difficult. Therefore, the
robot must be designed to
perform multiple tasks. The
team has 2.5 minutes to get as
many points as possible while
avoiding penalties, like touch-
ing the robot. They have three
chances to get their best score.
The project theme this year
was Animal Allies, and the
team had to identify a problem
between animals and humans.
After naming the problem,
they had to propose a solution,
research the solution, share it
with others, and present a skit
at the tournament.
Cooper and Micah worked
on the project, and Bodie and
Matthew mostly designed the
robot with some help from the
younger boys. All of the boys
worked on programming mis-
sions for the robot.
“I love that a group of four
boys came up with ‘Mastitis
in Cows,’” said Flaherty.
Kim Hapke, Naturopath
971-409-0908
Sisters Art Works Building
Proud to be 100% locally owned & operated
Large organic produce selection
Larger & improved natural selection storewide
Meat cut & ground fresh daily
Huge bulk-foods department
Weekly 10 lbs. or more meat & produce sale
All your favorite local brands & items
Only 20 minutes from Sisters
Located in the Cascade Village Shopping Center, Bend
Open every day, 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
It’s off to state competition for Sisters robotics competitors.
The rotalactors used by big
dairies can cause mastitis in
the teets of cows. So the boys
thought of a way to add pad-
ding and a more human-like
milking motion to the rotolac-
tor pads.
They emailed three large
national dairies. They also
visited Hope Springs Dairy
in Tumalo where they got to
milk cows, drink raw milk,
and bottle-feed calves. They
had a great day and named
themselves The Coder Cows.
“In the past they have been
the Outlaws, but since we are
not affiliated with the school
we dropped that this year,”
explained Flaherty.
The Coder Cows mis-
sion table and robot will be
at Sisters Science Fair, where
people can see demonstrations
and try their hand at program-
ming a mission, with the help
of the boys.
“Sisters Science Club
helped us with a donation for
our team registration fee,”
Flaherty said.
New teams can expect to
pay approximately $900 for
team registration, a robot kit
of parts, and a Challenge Set.
Additional costs for event
participation, travel, food,
team shirts, and other optional
items will vary. Grants, spon-
sorships and fundraising
events can help defray some
of the costs.
“I think FLL is a won-
derful program. If anyone is
interested in starting a team, I
am happy to help them navi-
gate the process. It is very
easy to do,” Flaherty offered.
Bodie succinctly stated
why he participates with the
robotics team: “Robotics is
what I want to do with my
career when I’m older, and I
think it’s really fun.”
WE ARE A FULL-SERVICE
WELDING SHOP!
Hair’s to a
Beautiful
2017!
We look forward to
serving you this year!
MEANINGFUL
MEDICINE
PHOTO PROVIDED
541-588-6611
220 W. Cascade Ave.
Come in, Relax, Enjoy!
Welding Fabrication
to Welding Repair
Small to Large Jobs
541-549-9280
www.PonderosaForge.com
S Sisters Industrial Park • CCB# 87640