Robot road trip: Fairmont State 'Falcotronix' team programming success

Jun. 21—FAIRMONT — An outlay of $2, 000 will take you places when your robot is planning the road trip.

That's how much money Falcotronix, the robotics club of Fairmont State University, received this week from the NASA West Virginia Space Grant Consortium.

The club will use the grant to fund future trips to regional and national competitions in coming months, its president Arrington Bucklew said.

"Falcotronix has had its fair share of competitions and events, " said Bucklew, a senior majoring in electronics engineering technology.

This spring the club and its programmable creation appeared on the national and global stage, at the VEX U Robotics World Championship in Dallas.

Falcotronix advisor and grant investigator Musat Crihalmeanu said he was heartened by the team's success.

"A faculty member's dream is to see their students engaged in high-level, international competitions related to the domains they teach, " the electronics engineering technology professor said.

If you build it, he said, you will learn it.

Especially, he said, when you see how your robot steers its way through STEM—science, technology engineering and math.

"The action of building robots is complex and incorporates assembling hardware pieces like electronic motors, valves and sensors, which is present in the engineering component of STEM, " the professor said.

"The science and technology components are present in physics and computer sciences, " he said, which translates to programmable brain power for the device.

It helps if you aren't skittish about taking things apart, then putting them back together, Bucklew added.

"There is no better way to understand the material in my textbook than to engineer and create something from scratch, " the senior said.

The consortium, meanwhile, is a NASA-sponsored organization comprised of West Virginia academic institutions and corporate and scientific partners.

It is dedicated to building research infrastructure and promoting STEM education in West Virginia.

Which is fun to watch on all levels, Todd Ensign told The Dominion Post earlier.

Ensign is a Fairmont State faculty member and education resource manager at NASA's Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation facility, at nearby I-79 Technology Park.

When he isn't doing that, he's wrangling robots, and robotics teams, compromised of budding engineers and programmers from middle schools and high schools, in every county in the Mountain State.

Fairmont State has been the host for many a competition.

Ensign hopes the aforementioned will stay in north-central West Virginia after college or other post-secondary training.

He wants to see them sporting employee badges at the Johnson facility, which is currently testing the computer software that will help guide vessels on upcoming missions to the Moon and Mars.

"It's for the divergent thinkers out there, " he said.

"Wherever they want to take it, is where it's going to go."

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