From left, eighth-grade engineering students from Milford Junior High School Sam Bowsher, Shreya Terala, Emily Abas and Carley Eggemeyer presented their VEX robot during an engineering showcase on May 3, 2017.

By Megan Alley
Sun staff

Students in the engineering and robotics programs at Milford Junior High School and Milford High School presented their projects to the community during an engineering showcase on May 3.

From left, eighth-grade engineering students from Milford Junior High School Sam Bowsher, Shreya Terala, Emily Abas and Carley Eggemeyer presented their VEX robot during an engineering showcase on May 3, 2017.

The event was co-hosted by Great Oaks Career Campuses at Tata Consultancy Services in Milford. It featured an array of student creations, from battling robots to a motorized wheelchair.

Eighth-graders Sam Bowsher, Shreya Terala, Emily Abas and Carley Eggemeyer presented their VEX robot, which they designed, built and programmed to compete in a task oriented challenge.

“There are different components to this,” Terala said. “We learned about how to build these parts together, we learned how to wire everything and get it working, and we learned how to program the robot.”

Abas noted the aspects of building the robot of which she’s most proud.

“Throughout the whole time we were trying to build, the arm was I think the most difficult problem we had. Gears kept breaking, we kept trying to replace it, we didn’t know how to fix it,” she said. “When we did, we finally got the right gear-to-gear ratio and it finally worked without cracking any gears and everything, and that was I think my proud moment.”

From left, 12th-grade engineering students from Milford High School Ryan Rettig and Thomas Angel presented their modified ride-on car for children who experience limited mobility during an engineering showcase on May 3, 2017.

The team won the Excellence Award at the regional competition at Great Oaks in February and advanced to the state championships.

From back left, 12th-grade engineering students from Milford High School Cory Finger, Britton McMullen and Kyle Jones presented their motorized wheelchair for a local five-year old girl with cerebral palsy during an engineering showcase on May 3, 2017.

Eggemeyer’s friend Terala inspired her to get involved in the program.

“Shreya actually did it first; she did it in seventh grade,” Eggemeyer said. “There weren’t as many girl teams, and I’m like ‘oh, this seems like fun,’ so I just decided to try it out.”

In that vein, the team remarked about being one of the only all-girl robotics teams to compete locally.

“I think it’s pretty great [to represent],” Bowsher said.

“Other girls see us, and they’re like, oh, I’m glad that there’s like girls out there that want to be in an all girl team with no boys and know that they can do it by themselves,” Eggemeyer added.

Twelfth-graders Ryan Rettig and Thomas Angel created a modified ride-on car for children who experience limited mobility.

The students rewired the control system so that it would operate in two modes, normal and therapy. In normal mode, the car operates conventionally, while in therapy mode, the child presses the foot pedal and stands up.

The students also disabled the car’s reverse and high-speed features, and they added a master power switch for safety.

The steering capabilities were modified to lock, and traction was added to the wheels.

“The students were thrilled to see it tested at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Perlman Center. The physical therapist gave valuable feedback to the design team, and now the car is ready for delivery,” Peter Leeper, program advisor, said in a project summary. “The students are thrilled to be able to use their engineering skills to help other people.”

Rettig expounded on this sentiment.

“It’s hard to put into words the gratification you feel when you just see that little girl playing with it up and down the hallway,” he said. “It seems like a parenting moment, that you’re just happy to see, even though we have no idea what it’s like to be a parent.”

Angel shared one of the most important lessons he learned from the project.

“Measure twice, cut once,” he said.

Other projects at the showcase were:

– An inexpensive and portable motorized wheelchair for a local five-year old girl with cerebral palsy. The team utilized the engineering design process to develop a wheelchair that would be easy to use for the family and allow the child to explore her environment. The students used an existing frame design and added a custom joystick, transmission, control program and electrical system. The wheelchair will be delivered to the family by the end of the school year.

– Three dimension printed prosthetics for other people in need, free of charge. The program started last year when the team developed an arm for a local girl named Hope. This year, the team designed a hockey stick grip for a local 12-year-old boy who isn’t able to grip the stick as tightly as he needs to due to his limb difference. The team is also working on an arm for a man in Nigeria.

– A capsule that’s being sent to the edge of space to take pictures, video and collect atmospheric data for study. A helium balloon that will pop at an altitude of 100,000 feet will lift the capsule. It then returns to earth with a parachute. The launch was scheduled for May 8, and the payload will be tracked in real time using the Automated Packet Reporting System — a SPOT tracker is being used as a back-up tracking system. The capsule is expected to land east of Lexington.