Multiple times a week at Aiken High School, a group of students meet and use design, engineering and manufacturing skills to to play – and win – a game. Their team is M’Aiken Magic.
M’Aiken Magic is a robotics team, comprised of public, private and home schooled kids from Aiken County and Richmond County, and they’re headed to their next competition on Thursday.
At the start of the competition season, the team is given a video that explains how a game is played and how it works. Then, the team does research, builds a prototype of a robot, and perfects their strategy.
John Fogarty, who is essentially the head coach of the team, said the team gives students the opportunity to learn 3D modeling and design, manufacturing, and programming.
Fogarty estimated that around 2,500 or more man hours were put into creating the robot the team is using in the big bot leagues. The team came together on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays for six weeks.
“The hands-on experience that students get as a member of our team is very useful for the students as it provides them with practical problem solving skills and knowledge that translates very well if they choose to pursue a career in STEM,” Fogarty said.
Team member Viktor Partyshev has been part of the team for five years and said he hasn’t gotten any less interested from the first day he began.
“I’ve been interested in design long before robotics, but whenever my older brother came here, he said ‘that’s for you’ and I stayed here ever since. ... I don’t even imagine how my life would look without robotics right now,” Partyshev said.
Fogarty said there are alumni of the program who are working as scientists or engineers in the area, and Fogarty, who works for Bridgestone now, is one of them.
“Gaining experiences with teamwork across multiple engineering disciplines is a great thing to have that will help prepare the students for even tougher challenges in the workplace later on in life. Engineers that have an understanding of the basic integration of software, hardware, and electronics are often the most successful in the real world. Our team provides our members an understanding of that level of integration that no other class/club does.”
The students also get help from members of the community who work in the fields they are using.
"We have engineers that work with us from companies like Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, Savannah River National Laboratory, Plant Vogtle, Bechtel, and retired engineers from Kimberly-Clark even," Fogarty said. "All these different companies not only support us financially, but we have people on our team that actually help mentor the students directly."
Read the full Aiken Standard article HERE.