“Once a week on Tuesday nights Jackson Benedict attends his robotics class at Central Arizona College like any other student.
But unlike any other student at CAC, Benedict is 8-years-old.
It’s true, Benedict, a second grade student at Coolidge Imagine Schools has been involved with robotics for quite some time, according to his mom, Kristen Benedict.
Things began when young Benedict was approached by CAC Manufacturing Engineering Technology professor Pete Lomeli, who he had known previously.
‘What makes Jackson unique is that he doesn’t wait to be shown, he doesn’t wait to be told,’ Lomeli said. ‘He gets on the Internet, he does his research on robots, different types and what’s out there. So he comes into class and tells me, ‘Hey, are you aware of this?’ And oftentimes I’m not.’
Lomeli asked Benedict if he would be interested in participating in a robotics competition through the college where he would be part of a team competing against students from across the state.
To officially be part of the team Benedict had to be enrolled and taking classes at the college, so Kristen enrolled her 8-year-old in college.
‘He’s a registered CAC student,’ she said.
Aside from Benedict, seven other CAC students participated in sixth Avnet Tech Games onsite competition, which was presented by Microsoft.
Nearly 200 students from colleges across Arizona went head to head at Tempe’s University of Advancing Technology during the competition, which included several different categories.
During Benedict’s portion of the competition he and his 18-year-old partner were tasked with creating and programming a robot utilizing Lego Mindstorms, a line of programmable robotic/construction toys.
The duo were isolated to a room with other teams and given one unopened, complete set of Lego Mindstorms and then tasked with building and programming a robot.
After the robot was complete the next step was to put it to the test.
The second portion of Benedict and his partner’s competition included sending the robot through a course where it had to follow a line and also complete miscellaneous tasks.
‘Some of those tasks were pretty interesting,’ Kristen laughed. ‘It was a lot of programming.’
Competition? Benedict was side by side with Arizona State University and University of Arizona engineering students nearing graduation.
‘His team held their own,’ Kristen said. ‘He loved it.’
Although the CAC teams did not place it was a great experience for them, according to Lomeli.
‘He made friends with the other teams around him and in this environment they were all willing to help each other so he would ask questions of other teams and towards the end of the competition he was going to the other teams and they were showing him how to do different things,’ he said. ‘We didn’t win scholarships but I feel he really came back as a winner.’
After the competition was complete Benedict returned home and according to his mom went right back to the drawing board.
‘He spent the afternoon and into the evening working on his robot, getting ready for next year,’ Kristen said. ‘He was trying to figure out what he could have done different and how he could make everything work.’
Lomeli is looking forward to working with Benedict in the future and sees only positive things to come.”
Article published on April 20, 2011 by TriValleyCentral.com