Nationally competitive JCHS students show mechatronic creations in action after top state finish in SkillsUSA

 Jefferson City High School students, Phillip Branch, senior, left, and Kaleb Tuinstra, perform some fine tuning on their Festo MedLab during a recent school day. The pair recently participated in the SkillsUSA competition and advanced to the national level.
Jefferson City High School students, Phillip Branch, senior, left, and Kaleb Tuinstra, perform some fine tuning on their Festo MedLab during a recent school day. The pair recently participated in the SkillsUSA competition and advanced to the national level.

In a classroom upstairs in Nichols Career Center, machines are coming to life.

There's more to life than just the illusion of it through motion, of course; part of life is the instinct of survival, and in humans, the willingness to extend that instinct beyond self-preservation unto others, even strangers.

High-tech machines can be tools to reach those aspirations - machines like "Church," the urban search and rescue robot developed by Nichols students Zachary Davis and Aidan Gallagher.

Technology can be used to destroy human life, too, and combatting the threat posed by hidden explosive devices is part of the mission "Church" will be tested on when Davis and Gallagher take the robot to compete in the national competition of SkillsUSA in June at Louisville, Kentucky.

Davis and Gallagher are seniors at Jefferson City High School. Both young men medaled in first-place at the SkillsUSA state competition at State Technical College in Linn earlier this month, in the category of "Robotics: Urban Search and Rescue."

The emphasis at competition will be on "search" in particular. "You don't every day have an earthquake," or another disaster that precipitates having to rescue people from underneath rubble, Gallagher said.

Instead of waiting for nature's wrath alone to lash out, robots like "Church" can be used in any situation too dangerous for people to respond, like looking for bombs, Davis explained.

"We didn't put (real) bombs with our robots," of course, Gallagher noted about competition.

Instead, the tank-treaded "Church" has to navigate a closed-course model house - complete with a front door, window, ramp and mailbox - looking for small, black plastic cubes simulating explosive ordinance.

"I basically direct him vocally," Davis explained of directing Gallagher, who steers remotely with a camera mounted on the claw that is robot's centerpiece.

Gallagher said the claw alone took a week to perfect. He said Davis and he worked on "Church" off and on for about two months. He added they could assemble the whole thing from scratch in two to three hours now if they did so all at once.

The robot probably wouldn't perform too well in the real world; it's "definitely not waterproof," Gallagher explained. He also noted the robot caught fire two days before competition at state, so Davis and he "pretty much had to completely re-wire it."

It also used to be back-heavy, but that problem has since been fixed, and "Church" is now capable of continuing to drive after flipping over.

If their robot-design was ever mass-produced and made fit for the real world, Gallagher said he wouldn't mind if it became an engaging build-project kit for kids versus an actual search and rescue device Promoting "any interest in robotics is enough for me," he said.

Davis and Gallagher aren't the only Nichols students who competed at state for SkillsUSA and will be going to nationals. Fellow classmates Phillip Branch and Kaleb Tuinstra, also students at Jefferson City High School, medaled in first in mechatronics with their "mech-lab" simulation of mass production.

With the push of a button, a pneumatic pump powering the system turns on. The second part of the setup then kicks into motion, an intelligent mini-assembly line that uses electric and optical sensors to differentiate between metal and plastic containers moving down its track.

Any metal containers are pushed aside, but the plastic ones continue on to the third componenet of the system - a capping mechanism that seals the plastic containers and pushes them off the line.

Tuinstra said each component is an intelligent representation of a singular aspect of mass production, and together the system illustrates "how it all connects."

Branch explained at competition, they will be judged on criteria including how much time it takes them to program their work, how self-automated their machine is when it operates and bug-free their programming is.

Branch is a senior, and Tuinstra a junior. Branch said he will be going to the Columbia branch of Moberly Area Community College to continue working in mechatronics. "I really like working with this stuff and there's plenty of jobs for it."

After his first two years, he said he'll decide if he wants to go on to get another degree, like in business, or go right into the workforce.

Tuinstra said he hasn't decided on what degree he wants to pursue in college, but said he wants to go to the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, to follow in his father's footsteps and be a manager in electro-mechanicals.

Davis also wants to go to Missouri S&T, after he goes somewhere else first to take care of his core classes. He eventually wants to get a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and work in space technology for NASA or the private company Space-X.

Gallagher said he'll be going to Columbia College, and then Missouri S&T for a degree in mechanical engineering before eventually a career in robotics.

All four young men study in the mechatronics program at Nichols. Tuinstra explained a variety of disciplines are included, like 3-D printing, drafting, soldering, industrial applications and robotics.

Their instructor Matthew Yeager said he's been at Nichols for five years, and last year was the first year someone in mechatronics went to SkillsUSA nationals.

More than 6,000 state contest winners will compete in the championships. Participants are career and technical education students from a variety of trade, technical and leadership fields.

Two Blair Oaks High School students also placed first at state competition and qualify for nationals: Baylie Bellin in "Screen Printing Technology"; and Ben Wibberg in welding.

All medalists at state received scholarships to State Tech.