Students test, fine-tune robots for meet
State competition in March in Seattle
WENATCHEE – Deep in the basement of the Chelan County Courthouse, a small group of engineers breathed life into what was once a heap of metal, motors and wire Wednesday night.
“It’s alive! It moves!” 12-year-old Rebecca Schmidt said gleefully.
Their 5-foot-tall robot lifted its metal arm and telescoped it toward the ceiling. The team of students and mentors gathered around.
“Everybody’s fingers out!” ordered Mark Adams, a retired engineer.
With a pressured “pffft,” the robot ejected a forked platform, which hooked onto a pole a few feet away.
“OK,” mentor Evan Mendonca said with a satisfied nod. “I’ve been worried we wouldn’t make it this far.”
The RAMbots have been waiting for this day for six weeks. The new 4-H club has been working feverishly after school and into the night, six days a week, in preparation for a statewide robot tournament March 18 and 19 at the Qwest Field Events Center in Seattle.
The team will face more than 100 other teams at the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics Competition. The judges award teams for creativity, performance, quality and team spirit. Students become eligible for about $14 million in scholarships by working on a team.
The RAMbot’s robot looks like a catapult on six wheels. The team controls its movement remotely with wireless joysticks and a programming code they wrote themselves. It runs on battery power. The arm and platform functions are powered by pneumatics, a system of pressurized air.
In total, about nine students have worked on the project. Several said they wouldn’t have made it without the help of the 16 volunteers who helped them design and build it.
“I was worried when we first opened the kit,” said Tyler Howard, 17. “I didn’t know 90 percent of what we were pulling out of that box.”
Earlier that day, a team from the Wenatchee Valley Technical Skills Center worked on their own robot, made from the same kit but with a different strategy in mind. It’s a defensive model, squat and sturdy, designed to block other robots.
“You’d be surprised how complicated this is,” said Joseph Routon, 18.
This year’s robot competition will be the Skills Center’s third. About 10 students from two classes designed and built it with only the help of their teacher, Ron Craig.
The challenge this year may be the hardest yet. The robots have 2 minutes to hang inflatable tubes on wall pegs. The higher the peg, the more points they get. In the last 15 seconds, each robot will deploy a minibot to climb a 10-foot pole.
“It’s really fast-paced when you get into the pits and you’re expected to be self-reliant when you’re there,” said 18-year-old Angela Bartlett of the Skills Center team. “You have to be prepared for everything.”
Now, it’s crunch time. Both teams still need to build the minibot. The RAMbot team needs a gripper and wrist joint. The Skills Center team hasn’t attempted a test drive yet.
The deadline is Tuesday. After that, it’s hands off until the competition.
“We can’t do anything else to it. It just sits there to torment us,” said Seth Grinde, 16, of the RAMbots.