TWIN FALLS, Idaho — The Tesla Coils, a local robotics team of high school-aged students, spends part of each summer passing down their skills, knowledge, and interest in competitive robotics to the next generation of players.
- As competitors in the global FIRST robotics community, the Tesla Coils have represented the Magic Valley area for 14 years.
- Team members spent a few weeks mentoring and training the younger generation of kindergarten through 9th grade at a series of summer camps this summer
- The robotics camps were among several community education programs for youththis summer held at CSI
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
"I love seeing the kids and how creative they can be. Because you never really know what's out there until you experience it,” Lylyan Bean told Idaho News 6.
Bean is captain of the Tesla Coils, a local team that competes in the national robotics community called 'first'
“My brother, when I was younger, he was on the Tesla Coils,” Bean said. “Well, I saw that growing up and I was 'like that's so cool. I want to do that.' So ... I took one of these camps.”
Every summer, when competition season ends, the team spends a few weeks together sharing skills
We show them how to build a basic chassis and from there, we just kind of let them loose to like brainstorm, build what you want, see what works, see what doesn't,” Bean said. “So you're going to see a lot of different robots in here.”
By the final day of the three-day camp, the kids had all designed, built, and programmed their robots to perform the actions necessary to complete this game.
“And the robots are completely autonomous so they can't control it at all,” Bean said.
"So there aren't any joysticks? No wires?” I asked.
“Nope, they have to push a button, program it, push a button to start it, and let it go and see what happens.
Camper Elliana Villalobos tells me all about how it works.
"It's my third day being here so I’m kind of getting used to it," Villalobos said.
“Knowing that we're inspiring the next generation and getting them into computers and robotics — which is all that's going to be in the future — is really, really cool,” Bean said.
