Robots capture student imagination at local high school

It’s Battle Bots — Clinton, Ont. edition — inside Central Huron Secondary School’s robotics class. It’s a new offering this year at the Huron County high school.

“It’s creative. You can do whatever you want, and you learn new things with it,” said grade nine robotics rookie, Keiara Peters

14 VEX Robotics kits arrived at Central Huron Secondary School (CHSS) this year, allowing students to build, modify, redesign and code their very own robots.

“The goal of a true robot is that it has to make autonomous choices. So, students start with the build, and then the goal is to program it using the VEX code, so the robot can perform autonomous movements,” said Jacqui Morley, CHSS communications and technology teacher.

The robotics course in action at Central Huron Secondary School in Clinton, Ont. as seen on May 24, 2022. (Scott Miller/CTV News London)

So far, the program is a big hit.

“It’s very similar to Lego, but you can get that feeling as if you’re building a fully working machine,” said robotics course participant, Brayden Chambers.

“Normally, coding classes, it doesn’t feel like you’re applying the knowledge that you’ve learned, but here you take all this coding knowledge, and you apply it in the arena, or doing simple tasks. You can see why your code is failing, instead of a screen message popping up saying, ‘Error,’” said student Caleb Laurin.

While they’ve got some catching up to do — as other schools have had robots for years — CHSS robotics students are keen to try their hand at province-wide robotic competitions as soon as possible.

“I would think about it. It’s definitely a good course to take,” said Peters.

“We run our own little competitions in class here, where they compete against each other. So, it would be great to take that further, especially since some of the limitations have been lifted,” said Morley.