Duane's Robotics Competition

On the Wednesday evening of March 16th, Duane packed his bags for Duluth, Minnesota. What's in Duluth? Well, after an all night bus ride, the Chicago Knights were there, along with Duane.

Below is a quick video (I'd watch the first minute or two) to get a feeling for what these competitions are like - this is a video from a past competition, but you get the idea of how fun this can be! (and what a great experience it is for the students)

StudentSpeak Webisode 6 from Spotlight on Vimeo.

For several months now Duane has been a mentor for a youth program in Robotics, his team is called the Chicago Knights. This high school group meets several times a week (along with Duane after work), and builds robots to bring to such competitions as mentioned above.

This particular competition housed hundreds of student groups from all over adjoining states, and unleashed the power of one man-sized robot for each team. Similar to a chess tournament, each team goes through rounds until the two most successful robots battle.

I liked how the local paper titled the article on Chicago Knights:

Winning isn't only thing for robotics team in Duluth from Chicago

Dominique Derosena, of the Chicago Knights robotic team,
works on a motor on a robotic arm Thursday at the DECC.

Here you can read the rest of the Article, if interested. It's neat to see a student mention Duane at the very end :)

Way to go honey!