Kirksville High Robotics Club

According to coach, Betsy Tornatore, the Robotics Club started five or six years ago in Miles Krusniak’s-11 basement.

When the club began to grow KATC offered them a space to plan, build, and test their robots. At first they met in one of the the engineering rooms, but when the Engineering Program began to grow, they moved to the attic space of the technical center.

The Robotics club is made up of two teams: Clockworks, the longer existing team and Binary Busters, the two-year-old “rookie” team.

Betsy Tornatore, the coach of Binary Busters, was courteous enough to give me and the rest of the Publications staff a tour of the clubhouse.

In the center of the large attic space is a small arena made out of PVC pipes and foam mats, where club members test their robots. In the arena are tasks for the robots to complete, such as picking up a plastic ball and placing it in a basket. Although the arena does not mirror those in competition, these sorts of tasks are ones that are expected to be achieved in competition.

Contrary to what many assume, testing and competition are truly a team effort. Everyone tries to be versatile in their contributions, but each person has some task that they are best at and try to do more often, such as coding or designing. One person may control the arm of the robot, while another controls the claw, and those two people have to communicate to make the limb of the robot work as one unit.

These teams travel to places like Kansas City and St. Louis to compete and meet other robotics enthusiasts. Competitors have a lot to get done (planning, testing, interviewing, and more) before and during competition, and although they describe it to be stressful at times they feel rewarded at the end of the process.

“At the end of the day when you can relax, you’ve done all your matches and you’ve done all your interviews with coaches and judges, it’s really fun cause you just get to talk with other people and get to know them and learn different ways of doing the same thing with your robot,” Robotics Club member and Clockworks teammate Jade Neeley-09 said.

Each club member also has a journal where they keep track of their thought processes, successes, failures, and ideas while they work on a project. These journals are evidence of the learning process that is designing and building a robot.

Not everyone who wants to be involved in Robotics Club has to know a lot about robots. According to Betsy Tornatore Robotics club has members for planning, building, testing, design, fundraising, and many other tasks.

“You can go in with no experience whatsoever, even as an adult or mentor, and you learn while you’re there building these skills over time,” Robotics Club member and Clockworks teammate Carlo Tornatore said.

Another member, Lauren Kramer-11, participates as a part of Binary Busters. Kramer also designs apparel and logos for the club, such as t-shirts and posters as well as banners for the Binary Busters’ competitions.

“Along with learning these robotics skills you’re learning social skills and business skills; it’s not limited to this one area. It’s very broad,” Carlo Tornatore-11 said.

Although robotics is not for everyone “if you’re interested in teamwork, business, robotics, or engineering in general then this is something I think you might want to stick your nose into and see if it’s something you’d like to do,” Carlo Tornatore said.