Posted: Dec. 21, 2009

Shorewood — As part of a regional competition, students at Shorewood Intermediate School presented their ideas to make the intersection of Capital Drive and Oakland Avenue safer for pedestrians.

The fact that playing with Legos and robots led to the presentation to village officials is all part of what the First Lego League Competition is all about.

There were three parts to the competition held in November at St. Thomas More High School: identify a transportation problem in your community, create an innovative solution for solving that transportation problem, and share your problem and solutions with members of your community.

All the teams were judged not only on their ability to complete the task appropriately, but also on their teamwork with each other and the teams around them. Although not all of the suggestions made by the team SIS Mindstormers are possible, some of them are already going to be implemented by the village.

After interviewing other students, parents and local officials, the team determined that the intersection of Capitol Drive and Oakland Avenue is the most dangerous intersection in Shorewood. The findings of the middle-school-aged children mirrored that of city planners and engineers who plan to renovate this intersection, and more of Capitol Drive, in the spring of 2010.

Some solutions in the works

Sophie Wood is a seventh-grade student at SIS and a member of the team that competed.

"They're the busiest streets in the center of Shorewood," she said. "That is where all of the students cross to go to school at the high school and SIS. That's where most of our concern was."

The potential solutions identified by the students were increasing "red time" for traffic lights, countdown timers, cameras that would allow officers to cite those who ignore yellow/red lights, and larger concrete islands for pedestrians.

Milwaukee County will be installing countdown timers that were purchased with money donated from the Shorewood Men's Club, a value of roughly $1,500. An additional turning lane for traffic making right-hand turns in the northbound lane of Oakland will reroute and modify the flow of traffic. A bike lane will allow walking pedestrians to have more space on the sidewalks and bikers will have a safer space away from pedestrians and vehicles.

"There will be bike lanes on Capitol, which will help the pedestrian traffic because a lot of people didn't want to ride a bike on Capitol," said Shorewood Police Chief David Banaszynski. "Because they were afraid it was such a busy street they wouldn't use it. Now with the bike lanes, they'll be off the sidewalks. We get more complaints about pedestrians almost getting hit by bikes on the sidewalk than we do by cars almost hitting them in the street."

Problem-solving on the fly

The students were required to present their transportation problem, along with their findings to a panel of judges, and SIS did this with a skit. The teams then had five minutes to complete an impromptu drill that the judges supplied to them.

Nine students between the ages of 11 and 14 program robots they designed on their own. These robots move, bend, flip and rotate independent of any help from their programmer.

Signe Bedi, an eighth-grade student at SIS, presses the "on" button on his robot and watches it drive away. Without any controller or additional help from Signe, the robot rolls through a series of obstacles on the standardized board. The robot must knock over certain blockades, pick-up specific loops, and run the exact course specified to obtain as many points as possible. Signe was one of nine members of the team competing in the challenge. The other student participants were eighth-graders Daniel Whittle, Anjana Murali, Emmy Benz and Adam Medley, seventh-graders Summer Jurinak-VanKempen, Sophie Wood and Alec Jacobi and sixth-grader Ananya Murali.

Rockwell helps sponsor teams

Like most regional competitions, there are entrance and registration fees, there's a fee for the standardized game board, and fees for the software and building kits the kids need to construct their robots.

The First Lego League works in cooperation with Rockwell Automation. Rockwell has sponsored many of the teams, and this year, Shorewood Intermediate School was one of them. The contribution from Rockwell funded all the start-up fees for the team.

Edward Byaliy, a parent of a former SIS student, and an employee of Rockwell Automation, has helped the children develop their robots and prepare for the competition. Byaliy said that teams can apply for sponsorship through Rockwell. Once a team is accepted, Rockwell usually donates the entire start-up cost. Then as the teams progress each year, Rockwell gradually donates less, allowing the teams to do fundraisers to make up the rest of the cost.

SIS won the Gracious Professionalism award - for working as a team and being respectful of other teams and for demonstrating high quality of work and knowledge - and tied for seventh place overall of the 23 teams registered.

Julie Canabiss, a science teacher at SIS, is the team's adviser.