FAIRMONT – Angelo Ferrell, in effect, was biting the hand that fed him Monday morning.
Or the toes that taught him.
Something like that, anyway.
At least his instructor was amused.
“Look at this,” Rebecca Cooper said. “I taught the kid everything he knows and he’s turning against me.”
Angelo is the on the robotics team at Charleston’s Riverside High School. Cooper, who teaches computer science and business at RHS, is the team’s advisor.
They were among 24 teams from across the state on the campus of Fairmont State University for the day.
The occasion was the state Robotics Championship for 2022, presented by the West Virginia Secondary Schools Activities Commission. The WVSSAC is now part of the robotics path in school instruction.
Monday was all about gimbals, gear ratios, torques, coding and the like, as Fairmont State’s Feaster Center was transformed into a high-tech epicenter for the day.
Teams constructed and programmed four-wheeled robots – such as the one Angelo was steering in attempt to run over his teacher’s toes.
Cooper appreciated the sense of mission, she said.
The sense of humor, also, she added, while deftly side-stepping another robotic parry.
“They’re having fun,” she said. “They’re learning.”
Sounds like a pretty good launch to an interesting, rewarding career, Dr. Drew Morgan said.
Morgan is a physician who also has taken flight to the stars.
The NASA astronaut was born Morgantown and grew up in California, New York, Texas, Delaware and Great Britain as his career military father moved from one posting to the other.
As a combat physician and flight surgeon Morgan deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa.
He was in orbit as an astronaut during the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 two years ago.
While on the crew of the Russian Soyuz MS-13 spacecraft he seven spacewalks, totaling nearly 46 hours on a tether in the expanse of the cosmos during the mission.
Seeing his home planet Earth suspended in the middle of that really did take his breath away, he said.
Even with the oxygen.
“NASA has top-notch training and simulations because NASA doesn’t like surprises,” the astronaut said, “but nothing can prepare you for that.”
Surgical teams, space flights and robotics competitions can only be successful with team work, he said.
Angelo agreed, while allowing he wasn’t really going to run his robot over his teacher’s foot.
He likes being part of a team, too, he said.
“We’re all working together,” the freshman said.
Good thing, too: During the “Tipping Point” competition, Riverside’s robot and others navigated mazes, retrieved objects and even skirted up and down a teeter-totter.
“I like watching our robot,” Angelo said, “because I know what went into it.”
Finding out what goes into things has been a longtime fascination for the student, who wants to work in robotics after college.
“When I was a little kid I used to take the TV remote apart all the time,” he said.
“My mom wasn’t too crazy about that, but she likes what I’m doing now.”
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