Carencro Catholic students make robot drive the bus to Nashville

CARENCRO — A school bus rolls down streets and over a rather large bridge, making stops at houses across the neighborhood to pick up passengers and get them to school on time.

The bus isn't the usual big yellow vehicle, but rather a small blue robot that looks like a pyramid of plastic balls. Students at Carencro Catholic School programmed the little bot they named Dasher (after its model type: Dash & Dot by Wonder Workshop) to follow lines of tape that served as streets.

The eight middle-schoolers used the coding language Scratch to instruct Dasher to travel the streets, each named after a member of the team, and stop at little homes made of cardboard, scrap wood and popsicle sticks.

The biggest challenge of the project was the bridge.

"The bridge made the course more complex," said 13-year-old Karter Deculus, a rising eighth-grader.

With such a top-heavy robot, the students had to calculate and recreate the angles just right to ensure Dasher made it over without falling off.

"We had to manipulate speed and just do trial and error," Gracie White, 14, said.

The work took months of practice and adjustments, especially between competitions. The team competed at Junior Beta District Convention in October and then the state competition in February.

"After district we changed so much," Karter said. "We went first and then watched other schools, and I know we brainstormed the whole time."

But changing the course often presented a new challenge.

"Any change would create a chain reaction of other changes to make," Seth Menard, 14, said.

A second-place finish earned the team a spot at the national competition, taking the Carencro students to Nashville for the BETA Robotics Showcase in late June. Competing against 40 schools from across the U.S., the team placed fourth and was the only Louisiana school to place in the top 10.

'There is so much learning happening'

This was the school's first year to have a robotics team, coached by junior high science teacher Carmen Bourque.

This is her first year at CCS, bringing with her some robotics experience, and she was excited to find the school already had robots on hand. It was a perfect time to start a team.

"They can learn so many life lessons from this," Bourque said. "In addition to teamwork, collaboration and definitely leadership, it teaches them that sometimes you win and sometimes you don't win but don't give up."

That's not to mention the different content areas a robotics competition touches — math, science, technology, public speaking and writing. The students not only had to code their bot and build the course, but also come up with a story that fit the competition theme and give a presentation as Dasher meandered through the "neighborhood."

"There is so much learning happening," Bourque said.

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The robotics team competed as part of Junior Beta Club, a national student organization in the U.S. that aims to "promote the ideals of academic achievement, character, leadership and service among elementary and secondary school students," according to its mission statement.

Carencro Catholic students began with this year's national club theme — "Beta (Better) Together" — and worked together to come up with their school bus route idea.

"We had a bunch of ideas and collaborated them together," said Jack Comeaux, a rising ninth-grader.

In their story, the bot collects all the team members at their homes and brings them together to school, an extra large carboard box painted gray, blue and gold to look like the real CCS building.

Over the school year, each member created their own house and helped build paper mache' trees to add to their landscape, all of which sat upon sturdy brown paper that allowed them to easily transport the course from one competition to another.

They used markers, hot glue, duct tape and more to add finer details and secure everything. Then there was the coding and practice run-throughs of the course.

'We didn't think we could do it'

The team raised $10,000 through fundraisers to get all eight members, their families and the two sponsors to the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center. It was the kids' first visit to Nashville.

Most of them didn't have experience with coding or robotics, but they were ready to try it. Now they wouldn't rule it out as a potential career path, they said.

"It was something new and seemed interesting," rising ninth-grader Branson Couvillion said.

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Seeing other schools, most of them larger than Carencro Catholic and perhaps with more experienced robotics team, was a little intimidating, Gracie admitted.

But, Branson said, they learned to have confidence in themselves.

"We didn't think we could do it (place), and we did," the 14-year-old said.

Seth added that they also learned a lot about teamwork, listening to onean other and "sticking to your assigned job."

Junior high reading teacher Sarah White co-sponsors Junior BETA Club with Bourque and has two daughters on the team, so she saw firsthand that confidence growing throughout the experience.

She said the students also seemed to find a passion for robotics, and it appears she's right. The team members are already looking for their next robotics opportunities.

Contact children's issues reporter Leigh Guidry at Lguidry@theadvertiser.com or on Twitter @LeighGGuidry.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: Carencro Catholic students design robot, drive the school bus