MANALAPAN – New Jersey’s annual Makers Day on Saturday gathered more than 30 groups displaying their creativity at the Monmouth County Library Headquarters. Makers Day is a statewide movement that celebrates the culture of creating and making things and offers educational opportunities and a variety of hands-on experiences, from solving Rubik’s Cubes to learning about children’s books with Rumson author Annie Silvestro, percussion music or even chickens.
Two 3-D printers were hard at work in the back of the room, developing figures from brightly colored spools. Pre-made objects, including various animal figures and intricate faces, surrounded the printers and a crowd of people continually swarmed the table, with little kids insistently asking, “can I make something, please?”
Manasquan High School’s Academy of Engineering robotics team, Cyber Blue, had an entire room near the back entrance dedicated to their work. In the center of the room a robot playing field housed a robot larger than a cat inside the fenced area. Controlled with a typical Xbox controller, the team allowed visitors to try out the robot for themselves. Kids were delighted and parents were impressed, even as their children steered the robot into the fence.
The Manasquan team recently competed for the second year in the First Tech Challenge (FTC), a competition that challenged them to create a robot that can complete various tasks. This year the tasks involved picking up and stacking blocks, making a figure stand up and balancing on a board. Though the team did not move onto the next round in the competition, they earned points for having their robot be autonomous for a few minutes; a sensor on the robot allowed it to move without being controlled for a short time.
A third robotics group at the fair was Rogue Robotics, a team that used to be a part of High Technology High School in Lincroft but now exists independently of the school.
Rogue Robotics plans on competing in the Marine Advanced Technology Education (MATE) ROV (remotely operated vehicles) competition in May of this year. They’ve been working on this underwater robot since October 2017 and have started meeting four times a week to do so. Similar to the First Tech competition, MATE ROV has various tasks the robot must be able to complete that fall under the theme of earthquakes, aircraft and energy. The tasks this year are to inflate a lift bag to bring heavy objects to the surface, to deploy and release an ocean bottom seismometer and to install a turbine array underwater.
This article was first published in the March 15-22, 2018 print edition of The Two River Times.