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WBHS robotics team preps for scrimmage
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · February 06, 2014


You don’t have to tell the West Branch High School robotics team that they’re rookies. They know it. You don’t have to tell them that the chances of them winning their first competition are slim. They’ve heard it.


And if you’re just going to stand there and talk, then get out of the way.

Because the first scrimmage is coming up Feb. 15, and they want to be ready.

Badly.

From freshmen to seniors, the System Overlord Robotics team began pouring themselves into their project since they got the game specifics on Jan. 4.

Walking through the classroom and adjacent industrial technology area, the students can be seen huddling around laptops typing away, measuring and cutting pieces of metal or wood, or running wires to circuits and parts while trying to figure out how to make things work.

In the industrial tech room, a couple of students were trying to figure out why a motor was not responding to the wireless commands from a laptop.

“The most difficult part is probably the programming,” freshman Hunter Zahner said. “C++ is not the most user-friendly (programming language).”

Senior Greyson Kolpin disagrees.

“It’s the electrical work and the wiring,” he said. “It’s very nit-picky. You’ve got to be specific or nothing’s going to work.”

They work every day, sponsor and Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics teacher Matt Cain said, with some of the 20-plus team members putting in 20 to 25 hours a week.

“The hardest fun you’ll ever have” is the tagline of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, and it involves raising money, designing a team “brand,” writing, teamwork, and programming and building a robot, according to usfirst.org.

“It’s taken a ton of prep work,” Cain said, noting that is only getting the team organized. Since none of the teams knew what the project would be until Jan. 4, there was no way to prepare specifically.

But the first scrimmage is very important, because it will give the team its first and only chance to see how their robot works in the field. Once they see what works and what does not, they have three days to work out the bugs until Bag & Tag Day on Feb. 18.

The game this year is called Aerial Assist, and the “teamwork” FRC talks about extends beyond the students in each individual school. Three schools will be put together to form a three-robot team that will face another three-robot team in the arena.

The arena is a 25-by-54-foot field with, at the far ends, large scoring goals up high and small ones down low. There’s also a five-foot-tall truss hanging across midfield. Think of a small basketball court combined with a volleyball net, and then drop that whole thing into a racquetball court. The ball is a two-foot medicine ball.

At first, the robots, pre-loaded with balls, must try to score based solely on their programming. After that, the students can take over the controls to get the robots to score more goals. They get extra points by passing the ball to fellow robots, by throwing the ball over the truss, moving to sections of the arena or by getting the ball into the high goals.

Each match is 2 1/2 minutes.

The System Overlord Robotics team is building its own goals, high and low, for its robot to practice. When this reporter visited, the robot had wheels and a swinging “foot” to kick the ball, and Cain picked up a couple of PVC-pipe arms that looked like they were meant to pick up the ball.

The team is also building a frame to hold the team banner, tracking their progress and recording their work — all for the contest.

“We have to show teamwork,” senior Ashley Moore said.

The essay must also show how the team overcame problems or obstacles, sophomore Allison Kusick said.

Moore, Kusick and senior Alex Van Trump are the team’s “Ladies of Logistics,” and do all the work that supports the rest of the team.

The team raised money from downtown businesses — Kusick raised $1,200 on her own — and got a $6,000 grant from NASA with a promise of $5,000 more if they return to compete for a second year, Cain said.

“This is sort of a big-league robot league,” the teacher said.

There are only five other teams in Iowa: Iowa City, Ames, Cedar Falls, Des Moines and Linn-Mar. While they will compete against each other at the Feb. 15 Cedar Falls scrimmage, the teams do a lot to support each other as well, Cain said. Cedar Falls and Linn-Mar have helped the new West Branch team get established.

After the scrimmage, the team travels to central Illinois — Pekin — for the Feb. 27-March 1 regional competition. Winners at the regional contest move on to St. Louis to compete in the national tournament.

“If you listen to the kids on the team,” Cain said. “They’re going to win it.”