Robotics team tackles real life

Lego competitors seek green solutions for church, school

By Eric Bartels

Pamplin Media Group, Feb 11, 2010

VERN UYETAKE / Pamplin Media Group

Amiel Patton-Hall’s team of Lego robot engineers, the Shock N’ Bots, used their problem-solving skills to foster car pools at church, school.

Without really being asked, Amiel Patton-Hall and her team of robot engineers are remaking their world, and little plastic blocks are the foundation.

Last month, Patton-Hall and four other Portland-area eighth-graders took second place at the annual Intel Oregon FIRST Lego League championship in Hillsboro.

They did so by building a problem-solving robot using materials created by Lego, the toy manufacturer whose interlocking plastic bricks have been snapped firmly to childhoods everywhere for decades.

But Patton-Hall and her colleagues didn’t take off their game faces when the tournament ended.

Inspired by the competition, which requires each team to devise a remedy for a local transportation issue, the West Linn-based Shock N’ Bots team is putting an idea into action.

Using existing online models, the team has found a way to help local residents carpool to school, church and elsewhere by creating maps that indicate where community members live in relation to each other.

“We decided that carpooling and this mapping idea would be a really cool idea to develop,” says Patton-Hall, who lives in Lake Oswego and attends Portland Jewish Academy. “It’s really great because it uses social networking.”

If anybody knows social networking, says Amiel’s mother, Sue Hall, it’s eighth-graders.

Lisa Horowitz, chief executive officer at Portland Jewish Academy, says the concept is perfect for the Hillsdale private school, which draws students from around the metro area.

“We have a car pool system in place, but it’s more cumbersome than the one Amiel has proposed,” she says. “It looks like a great idea.”

At Christ Episcopal Church in Lake Oswego, where Patton-Hall’s family attends, Rector Shannon Leach is eager to graduate from the old car pool system, which relied on push pins on a bulletin board.

Earlier this month, the Shock N’ Bots team promoted its idea at the annual Earth Care Summit, a sustainability networking event for area churches sponsored by Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon.

Patton-Hall, 13, says her team is excited about spreading the word of its road map to reduce auto emissions.

In addition to reducing emissions, Patton-Hall figures her school could hand out 10 scholarships with the gas money carpooling could save in one year.

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