From behind him, in a square area formed with wooden boards, the sounds of clicks and clanks and whirs emanated as a small, robotic rover traversed the ground. Responding to Peguero’s pushing and pulling on the joysticks on his controller, the craft lurched and crawled.
He steered it around a rock, lowered its arm to pick up an aluminum can and then directed it to an awaiting box. As he shifted the arm, intent on successfully dropping off his payload, the can tumbled away, smacking the side of the box on its way to the ground.
“It was way harder than I expected it to be,” Peguero said. “This is just a learning experience for next time.”
The rover was a project built by a team of students, including Peguero, from Reading High. And on Thursday that team joined more than 100 other local students in testing their creations during the annual Sea, Air and Land Challenge.
The challenge, organized by the Berks County Intermediate Unit and hosted by the Berks Career and Technology Center West Campus, allows students to show off their science and engineering skills by designing and building robots to complete one of three tasks.
The air challenge, according to BCIU Assistant Program Administrator Jillian Darlington, asks students to create a flying craft that fights forest fires.
The drones had to fly over an area, use a camera to locate spots designated as on fire and drop a payload to put it out.
The land challenge, which Peguero was competing in, was designed to replicate an incident at a hazardous waste facility. Students had to build a rover that could detect hazardous waste, pick it up and move it to a safe location.
For the sea challenge, students built submersibles that had to find and collect pieces of a wrecked ship or sub.
Peguero said the challenge was right up his alley. He said he has recently become very interested in robotics, including joining the robotics club at Reading High.
Despite running into some hurdles while competing, he said he was pretty happy with the rover he helped build.
“I like how strong it is, and it can move fast,” the 17-year-old junior said.
Sixteen-year-old Wyomissing High School sophomores Jackson Nierle and William Combs decided to take on the air challenge.
“I have a drone at home and I’ve been working to start a drone photography business,” Combs said of his interest.
He and Nierle spent a lot of time troubleshooting their flying machines, creating a host of prototypes to figure out the best way to attach a camera and drop a payload.
“We were pretty unconfident,” Nierle said about the result of all that work. “The camera made the drone pretty uneven, it’s pretty makeshift.”
Despite their concerns, the pair actually had a lot of success. After the first of two attempts, they were in the lead.
“It’s going pretty good,” Combs said with a smile.
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