Students at southwest Atlanta elementary school create robots

In the lot of the Kindezi School at Gideons Elementary in Southwest Atlanta, what may look like child’s play is anything but. 

“It’s very complicated,” 5th grader Jace Williams told Channel 2′s Berndt Petersen.

Williams and her classmates built a robot.

“His name is Gary,” Williams said.

4th grader Jeremiah Westover named his team’s robot WALL-E Wonka, Junior.

“There’s a solar panel on top.  The solar panel takes in the sun’s light and that will turn it into power to the robot’s wheels,” Westover said.

23 students in the school’s Gifted Program, all Elon Musks in the making,  just completed a crash course in robotics.  On Friday they showed off the results.

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The school sits in the city’s Pittsburgh community.

It’s an underserved area where children can face a lot of hurdles, but the coordinator of the gifted program says at this school they go over them.

“Their financial situation doesn’t mean anything,” Coordinator Shanee Patterson said. “The moment you have someone who cares enough to show them what they ‘can’ do, they’ll be more than happy to join in and do it.”

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It was designed to be a robot race, but the young inventors learned that not every experiment goes as planned.

“Well, the sun decided it didn’t want to shine,” Williams said.

Petersen advised the students to take their complaints to Severe Weather Team Two Chief Meteorologist Brad Nitz.

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