Computer coding meets real life with Turf Tank, a robotic field painter

Melissa Benjamin's Technical Mathematics & Computer Science class, at Washingtonville High School, recently spent time with Tim Cummings and Dominick Delfino from the Washingtonville Central School District Grounds Department learning how the athletic fields are painted using the Turf Tank machine.  

Students in have been learning computer coding and were able to gain insight into how this skill is used on their athletic fields. 

The Turf Tank machine is a robotic field painter that paints the athletic fields and maps out the parameters for different games like soccer, football or lacrosse. Mr. Cummings and Mr. Delfino explained to students that the Turf Tank takes about 30 minutes to paint the field and uses about five gallons of paint as opposed to a human who would use about eight to 10 gallons of paint. 

“The robot uses satellites,” said Philip Amadis, a junior at Washingtonville High School. “It’s kind of like Google Maps, and it has a layout of the field. The app that goes with the robot tells it how to paint the field.”

Students were able to test out the robot themselves by “driving” the robot with the app and saw how the sensors on the machine helped it measure its surroundings and avoid hitting things like poles. 

The Turf Tank is similar to the Roomba, the robot machine used in many homes, because it also uses a docking station. While the machine is mostly independent, humans still need to monitor the equipment to catch errors and troubleshoot them.  

Mr. Cummings and Mr. Delfino said using the robot has various advantages including cost and material savings, time savings and improved accuracy.  

They demonstrated the cleaning, troubleshooting and testing of the machine, and connected those processes to growth mindsets and persevering through problem solving to achieve goals.

“Since we were learning about computer coding in class, it was nice that the students were able to see how that works in real life and also see the jobs associated with that skill,” Ms. Benjamin said.