Author: PAT CLAY
Date: Feb 9, 2011
Section: NEWS
The Legooners, a home-schooled Lego Robotics team of middle-school students, honed in on blindness as they learned about biomedical engineering advances and overcoming disabilities.
The Legooners are a LEGO League robotics team under the auspices of FIRST, an acronym: For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology. FIRST is a middle – school competition that combine robotics and performance with researching a topic of benefit to their community.
Jan. 22, the Legooners flew a blind mobility trainer Daniel Kish in from California for a Sensory Awareness Day at Kiwanis Park on Merritt Island.
Drake Vorndran, 11, said, “Raising the money was a hard point we had to figure out.”
The Flash Sonar method Kish demonstrated is based on echolocation, the same form used by bats, dolphins and whales. Using it, he is able to climb trees, ride a bike on mountains, skateboard and much more.
Mary Compton, 13, was amazed when she tried echolocation. “When I clicked (my tongue) and heard the sound come back from a pillar, I thought I was going to hit it, but I was a long way from it.”
Kish lost his sight to cancer as a baby and discovered echolocation instinctively. As a toddler he climbed out a window and explored his neighborhood. Now, 44, Kish says that it is his first memory.
Nicole McMillen, 13 said, “I learned different ways to cope with blindness and how sight is connected to our our different scenes.”
Piet Oudejans, 11, said, “It was great to study this and to meet Daniel.”
The Legooners competed with their LEGO robot in area regionals on Jan. 29.
Tim Compton, 11, said his favorite part of LEGO League is the competition. “I like sharing my ideas with the team to come up with a cool robot.”
For more information about competitions go to www.usfirst.org.
Merritt Island LEGO team delves into echolocation Florida Today – Melbourne, Fla.
World Access for the Blind
To Whom This May Concern:
I am Daniel Kish, President of World Access for the Blind. We specialize in foster freedom for blind people everywhere by teaching the visual system of the brain how to use non-visual information to “see” through sound and touch. We are most known for our work in human sonar. Please see the article enclosed for your reference.
http://www.hbindependent.com/articles/2009/07/31/blogs_and_columns/pipeline/hbi-pipeline073009.txt
I am honored and gratified to have been invited by the Legooners to train several blind kids in our revolutionary techniques. This event will take place on Saturday, January 22nd. The Legooners have already raised the funds to fly me out to Florida. They have contacted several blindness organizations to invite blind kids to participate in the event, and they have drawn the attention of the local media for coverage of the event. They are also planning a fundraiser to raise a generous contribution for our nonprofit organization. They are a terrific group of kids who have really set their sights high in order to help blind kids set their sights higher. It has been a pleasure to work with them remotely on this worthwhile project, and I’m excited at the prospect of working with them in person. This promises to be a very rewarding event for all concerned. I most definitely endorse the quality, scope, and integrity of their efforts.
This was written About our work with the late Samuel Oldridge, 7 years old, as we keep him in our thoughts:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/showbiz/yourlife/2008/05/30/real-life-exclusive-meet-sam-the-blind-boy-who-uses-dolphin-like-clicks-to-navigate-89520-20588818
http://www.utne.com/Science-Technology/Daniel-Kish-World-Access-for-the-Blind-FlashSonar.aspx
Thank you for your kind attention.
With Respectful Sincerity,
Daniel Kish, M.A., M.A., COMS, NOMC
President
www.worldaccessfortheblind.org
17328 Ventura Blvd #195 Encino CA, 91316 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization
Toll Free: (866) 396-703 http://www.worldaccessfortheblind.org
Fax: (562) 428-0800 U.S. Federal Tax ID: 33-0936778
Venue Announced: Kiwanis Island Park Pavillion
We have finalized the venue!
The Sensory Experience Day will be held at
Kiwanis Island Park Pavilion
on Merritt Island, between Merritt Square Mall and WalMart off of 520.
Saturday, January 22 9:30 – 12:00
Hot Dogs & Lemonade will be sold to help us meet our goal of $1,000 to cover the cost for one day of training for one blind child.
Register here
Sensory Experience Day:
Sign up here
Please let us know that you’re coming, if you’re blind, visually impaired or sighted, and how many people you are bringing along.
The venue will be finalized later today!
Sensory Experience Day
On JAN the 19th Daniel
Kish is coming to town and on the 22nd he will have a Sensory Experience day. Daniel Kish is from World Access for the Blind and he has taught 12oo people how to echo locate. He will be introducing people to Flash Sonar ” echolocation”. We invite any blind people to come. If you are not blind you might want to come and learn just for the fun of it. If you come I bet you will have a good time.
Sensory Experience Day:
Sign Up Here
Please let us know that you’re coming, if you’re blind, visually impaired or sighted, and how many people you are bringing along.
The venue will be finalized later today!
Rockwell Automation
When we first got to Rockwell Automation we where all excited and nervous at the same time. We had all been waiting for this and we where ready to explain some things to people who wanted to know the software and the hardware. We where explaining things to people and thay all where very excited about what where doing. We where showing them the misions and our robot and even the progaming.
first tournament
When we first Got to the tournament we set up the table and started working on some programs.
Next we went up to a practice run to see how good our robot was. p.s It stunk.
After that we practiced our skit and did very well.
Some time after that we had our first run for points and we didn’t get any missions done.
Immediately after that we went to robot design where they ask you questions on the robot and why you chose to build the robot the way you did.
Next we practiced our skit some more.
About and hour later we had our second run and did just about as good.
Then we had to go to core values.
Right after that we practiced the skit for about 2 hours.
After that we had our 3rd and final run and we didn’t do so good.
Next we preformed our skit to the judges and finally saw our scores.
Finally we got regional bid and went home.
Project day at Piet’s
10-27-2010
Piet holding up model of eye ball
.
Mary shows me the robot.
We worked on the tongue.
We worked on the model eye.
Legos at Nicole’s
- Piet programming a mission and Nicole smiling.
We where able to program a mission and collaborate the fork lift and steering.
By collaborate the fork lift and steering I mean make the fork lift go all the way up and down with out grinding the motor.
And turning the wheels to turn left and right all the way without the motor grinding.
The program we wrote was the syringe by going forward and backward.
