BY RICK PUSIAK
A group of Lively Secondary School students will be on pins and needles for the next couple of days. Actually it would be more correct to say they?ll be on diodes, hydraulics and computer chips.
The pupils won the right recently to represent Northern Ontario at a national robotics competition in Toronto.
?What we?re trying to show is not only what?s going on at the school but Sudbury and region, and their ability to compete on a national scale,? said school principal Les Lisk.
The actual competition will take place Thursday and Friday. Teams from across Canada and some American cities will be at the event.
Aside from the hard work the students put in to building an industrial robot, the Lively team wouldn?t have made it to Toronto if it hadn?t been for a little help of the Sudbury-based Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT) at Cambrian College.
Executive director and CEO Darryl Lake, said NORCAT?s Toronto partner, MD Robotics is working on a space drill that will one day be used on Mars.
A local delegation including NORCAT board members heard about the student robotics competition and got educational representatives here interested in the robot Olympics.
The success of the Lively team is interesting considering the school has low enrolment and was up for review and possible closure just a few years ago.
Determination of staff and students convinced the Rainbow District School Board to keep the facility open.
It is now a ?magnet school? specializing in computer and other high tech courses. Pupils from all over the region are offered bussing to Lively, which has been designated a School of Integrated Technology.
10 Lively students are involved in the robotic competition. They were assisted in construction of the device by Laurentian University, Inco, Aegisys.com and the City of Greater Sudbury.
