Robotics participates in FIRST competition

Sophomores Colin Heinzmann (left) and Jamshed Vesuna use the milling machine together.

The Robotics Team has started planning for a competition set to begin Thursday, March 18.

At the start of the second semester, the team was notified of this year’s theme for the 2010 For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) Robotics Competition.

“Every year, we build a robot, and the robot plays a game,” Robotics Team Co-Adviser Karen Davis said. “Last year, what we had to do was pick up these balls that were supposed to be moon rocks, and you dumped them in a trailer and the other team would pull them out.”

This year, a robotics team from each high school has to play soccer in teams of three, which means that the Robotics Team will be playing with two other schools. The game is called “Breakaway” and is played in a 27 by 54 foot field divided into 3 zones by ridges. After a robot scores a goal, extra points are awarded if the three robots climb onto one other and hold onto a post for a ceremony.

Since the release of the game plan, the Robotics Team has six-and-a-half weeks until the deadline for the robot to be completely built.

Robotics Team Co-Captain senior Marshall Scott said that team members started the initial design process to figure out what they wanted to do.

“Because the game changes each year, we have to adapt to a new game each year,” Marshall said.

The soccer field where the game will be played has two bumps which robots have to successfully climb over in order to make it to the opponent’s goal post. The Robotics Team decided that a track system, much like the kind a tank possesses, would be the best, since with regular wheels the robot would likely fall.

The team has a full 3D model of the robot on its computer and will make machine parts from those models.

“We’ve been building prototypes for the robot, but most of them are disassembled at this point because we’re done prototyping and we’re now at the build stage,” Marshall said.

In terms of building the robot, Davis said that there is a company that makes the parts in Oregon that would be willing to give the Robotics Teams one of the treads for free as long as it placed the company’s sticker on the robot.

Engineers have also come in to help the students design the robot and use physics to calculate everything out.

Davis said that this year’s members on the Robotics Team are outstanding.

“Last year we had a lot of freshmen, where we had 4 people who knew what they were doing and 20 who didn’t,” Davis said. “So last year, we had a lot of training to do.”

This year, most of the freshmen joining the team were already accustomed to robotics and were able to start working right away.

The Robotics Team will also be part of a feature in ROBOCON Magazine, a bi-monthly publication for robot enthusiasts in Japan.

Norri Kageki, a freelance journalist from Tokyo, Japan and who currently lives in San Jose, is covering the FIRST Robotics Competition this year for the magazine. She was interested in following the team during the whole process of building and participating in the competition.

“I feel that it will make the story much more vivid and interesting for the readers, many of them also being high school students that participate in various robotics competitions in Japan,” Kageki said.

She chose the school’s Robotics Team to follow because she knows one of the engineering mentors of the team.
During the robot building phase, Kageki is planning to visit the team one to two times a week. Her article on the Robotics Team will be updated on her blog atgetrobo. com/getrobo/.

“Being able to talk to and follow the progress of the Los Altos High School Robotics Team will be a valuable experience for me as well as our readers,” Kageki said. “I think we will be able to learn a lot from [the] team.”

The Robotics Team meets after school in room 602 from 3:30 to 9 p.m. every day, including weekends, to continue building and working on the robot.

“It is totally their clubhouse back there,” Davis said. “They just hang out and [seem to have a] lot of fun there.”

“I’ve been interested in robotics for a really long time, so I felt like freshman year it would be a really cool thing for me to do,” Marshall said.

Davis said that most of the Robotics Team members go on to become engineers.

“A lot of our graduates come back to help us, and that is really cool for me to see [how much they’ve progressed],” Davis said.

The team encourages students to attend the competition to support the team as well as see the robot in action.

“Other schools have 50 to 80 students come and support them at these competitions,” Marshall said. “It would be great if our students could come and cheer us on as well.”