ELLSWORTH, Maine (WABI) -- There were a lot of frustrated sighs and grunts from kids participating in a LEGO Robotics Camp.

Billy Wall, Ellsworth, the camp director said, "What the kids are learning mostly is how to fail repeatedly, so we give them a chance to fail over and over and over again and have fun."

Dawson Peterson, a camper, said, "We're building robots and we're trying to put them through different sets of obstacles."

Max Harmon, another camper, said, "At the moment we're doing a maze, which is kind of irritating."

But according to camp staff, that's all part of learning.

Wall said, "We're asking them to learn to combine programming and some structural mechanical stuff and a whole lot of persistence which is mostly what the camp is about. We want kids to try something different within some guidelines and some support from us."

During the week-long camp, kids worked with LEGO MindStorms robotics kits . They built and programmed the robots to perform tasks using a laptop.

The camp is meant to teach kids skills linked to engineering and computer programming, as well as team work and logic. All of these experiences prepare them for the future.

Wall said, "It's unlikely that any of them will have any kind of a career that does not involve some sort of telling a machine what to do. Whether that's a desk top computer or a piece of sensory automation on a building or they become an engineer or a scientist. If they just put together plumbing, they're going to be interfacing with electronic instrumentation, so they get a taste of all of that."

And while there are many failures in learning, there are also many triumphs.

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Kids have fun learning how to fail at robotics camp - KWQC - KWQC-TV6