Students from four Western NC districts raced onto Appalachian State’s campus the week of June 17th to experience the world of coding through the lens of NASCAR and robotics thanks to the Appalachian State GEAR UP Partnership. 
The Academic Innovation Team organized and facilitated the week-long camp with the help of App State’s physics professors and robotic team coaches, Mary Clements and Zach Russell. Scholars utilized micro:bits and ElecFreaks Cutebots along with ElecFreaks Joysticks to complete two challenges at the end of the week. Participants also had the opportunity to travel to Concord, NC for tours of the NASCAR Research and Development Center, Media Production Studios, and Roush Fenway Keselowski Team Garage. The camp was designed to expose students to the intricate world of robotics during the first portion of the week and culminated on the fifth day with a “racing” theme coding competition meant to test the campers’ knowledge of what they learned. 
Challenge 1-The Arena
Participants were tasked with programming the ElecFreaks Cutebot to search for a magnet in the middle of an arena complete with sneaky traps. The competition was conducted in a round-robin format, with starting positions determined by a roll of the dice.
Every aspect of the bot’s behavior was pre-programmed by the students. The programming required students to develop randomization codes focused on utilizing sensors and motion. The code prevented the bot from crossing any black surface using tracking probes, requiring the bot to navigate around the black arena obstacles in search of the magnet. A second sensor was activated through code to detect the magnet using the installed ultrasonic sensor. “When coding the robot, I was surprised by how good I made the autonomous section” one participant commented following his experience in the arena.
Challenge 2-The Obstacle Course
For the second challenge, scholars were tasked with driving the bot around the track with the remote control and the fastest time wins. It sounds simple enough, but coding a bot to respond to a controller took several attempts. Both the controller and the bot’s response to the input are programmed by the students. Just like in a real race, time penalties were applied for any obstacles hit during the attempt. One participant said that “controlling the robots and making things from mistakes” was the highlight of the week.
Programming the joystick relied on utilizing an x and y coordinate system. Students coded the sensitivity of the movements to meet their individual preferences. They also utilized the buttons on the joystick for acceleration and deceleration. Three laps around the track, avoiding cones and buckets, took some participants less than one minute, an impressive feat for novice programmers.
A Brand New Experience
A highlight of the week was the trip to Concord to expose students to a multitude of career opportunities within NASCAR. “The NASCAR trip was super informative and cool” was the consensus among students on the return trip home. Meeting with Tim Murphy of
Research and Development gave students insight into the development of chassis and regulations. Chris Cook and his team at NASCAR Media provided an inside look at the duties and obligations for successfully broadcasting races, shows, and commercials to national and international stations. Engineers Mimi So and 
Drew Nabb, both Vehicle Development Engineers, answered questions following the tour of RFK Racing provided by Alex Lenzmeier, Senior Project Engineer. These opportunities provided students with examples of career opportunities at a national level without leaving the state of North Carolina. Participants of the trip could be heard saying “There are cool careers that I didn't really think about” and “I still had plans to go to college before the course, but this course has shown me new options for what I might like to study in college.”
Competition Day
“My favorite thing was competing in the arena. It was great seeing my hard work pay off in winning and finding the magnet.” Families and GEAR UP staff gathered in the classroom on the final day of camp to support scholars in the final competitions. This day was full of laughs, frustration, and critical thinking to solve any problems with the programming and code of the bot or controller. A highlight of this day was the style award where students added lights, sounds, and motions to show off their skills.
This write-up was composed by Brittany Brady, an Academic Innovation Specialist for Appalachian GEAR UP and a member of the Academic Innovation Team. Brady has served in this role for one year as part of the academic initiatives of the GEAR UP federal grant. Before this opportunity, she was an elementary school educator in western North Carolina, teaching 3 through 5 scholars in various content areas. Her field of concentration is organizational leadership and administration.
Camp NASCAR 2024
Camp NASCAR 2024