If anything distinguishes a college student from a high school student, it is the obvious fact that one goes to high school while the other attends college.
However, some high school students proved to be the exception and went toe-to-toe Monday in a sumo robot contest.
Polytechnic held a Sumo Robot Competition - a death match for robots.
But these are not ordinary robots. They are built by several students invited to attend a semiweekly engineering course at Polytechnic.
Chell Roberts, the College of Science and Technology's Department of Engineering professor, said students were grouped together and each team created a robot that would push each other off a "sumo ring."
Roberts said, "I think one of the cool ones was a robot that would absorb sound."
Using absorbent material, the students made a "cloaking device" to fool the other robots, which worked out for the team since all the robots would use sound to find other robots.
"That was more or less the eventual champion," Roberts added.
The Mesa Public School District formed the Mesa Early College Academy, or MECA two years ago - a program that allows some of the brightest high school students to get a taste of college.
Roberts said he heard of the MECA program and utilized it in starting an umbrella program under Polytechnic's engineering school.
Then, they went to recruit students for this semester.
The program at ASU gives high school students a flavor of college life and earns them credit, Roberts said.
"My selfish standpoint in engineering is I want to capture the students in my program," he said.
Eventually, the program at ASU will break off from the MECA program and become its own. Next fall, students will be chosen from different high schools and not solely culled from MECA.
There are currently 12 students attending the program at ASU. Roberts said he hopes it will expand to 40 students as well as to other courses besides engineering.
At Monday's event, amid the cheering, yelling and robots being propelled out of the ring, one robot broke down and one robot fight required a rematch.
"The high school students did very well," Roberts said. "They did as well as - on average - your typical first-year engineering student."
Reach the reporter at: Marc.Young@asu.edu.
