Sat Nov 21 2009
ARCHBOLD -- Tanner Ellsworth, a senior at Fairview High School, is already getting hands-on experience that will benefit his future employers.
Ellsworth is a pre-engineering Tech Prep student who attends part-time at Four County Career Center earning high school credits and part-time at Northwest State Community College earning credits that will go toward his associate degree.
Recently, Ellsworth entered into the 2009 National Robotics Challenge, a competition where students were challenged to build a working robot that was able to complete a lunar landscape obstacle course.
Ellsworth credits the technologies offered at both Northwest State Community College and Four County Career Center for his ability to take the project from a rough sketch to reality. At the competition, Tanner was awarded the prestigious title of Honda Innovation Award nominee for his robot design. This nomination was awarded to only five outstanding students out of the 280 that participated.
"I think the best part of the day was when a judge came up to me and asked if I had built the robot from a kit," said Tanner. "He could not believe that I had built almost the entire thing from spare parts and pieces I was able to find around the lab."
The judges at the competition were also impressed that Ellsworth had built the entire robot without the help of his fellow students. Many of his competitors built their robots and entered the competition as a team. Tanner, however, had his own team with his instructors at FCCC and Northwest State. "I couldn't have done all this without the help of my instructors," said Ellsworth. "They spent a lot of time outside of class helping me work through problems with the design."
The National Robotics Challenge is now long over, but Ellsworth is still keeping busy. He plans to enroll at Northwest State in the mechanical engineering technologies program after graduation, and in the meantime is still working to perfect the design of his robot.
"I don't have a lot of time to work on it though," said Tanner. "Soon I will need to get started on my design for next year's competition."
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