The CCHS robotics team is in full swing creating its soccer-playing robot for an April 1-3 competition in the Twin Cities. From left, industrial arts teacher Eli Hill, Karl Ingebrigtsen, Alec Neilsen, and Max Simonowicz.
A dozen and a half students – six of them from Silver Bay – and two teachers, including Cook County High School industrial arts teacher Eli Hill, returned energized from a trip to the Twin Cities for the January 9 kickoff of the 2010 FIRST— “For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology”— competition. This will be Cook County’s second year in the nationwide competition, and Hill expects 15 to 20 CCHS students to participate.
The competition challenges students to develop their technological skills and work cooperatively. This year, each robot will team up with two others from other schools and play a game quite like soccer. Thefield will be rather large: 27 feet wide and 54 feet long. The robots must either go over or under obstacles in the field and then shoot a ball into a goal. Each side of the field will have three robots working together.
Entering the competition is not cheap. Each team must pay $6,000 and will receive two bins full of materials they can use to make their robots. Theycan accept any number of materials donated to them, but they cannot spend more than $11,000 to make their robot.
The CCHS team is spending three to five afternoons and evenings a week together designing and building the robot in the Industrial Arts department. They show up right after school and stay until the middle of the evening, with things like pizza, cookies, and pop to fuel them. One family even donated two pizza ovens to help the cause.
Teams have six weeks to design and build their robots, which must be shipped to competition officials by February 20, where they will be tested for certain “skills.” The tight timeline, Hill said, simulates real life conditions in which engineers must create a product under a deadline. The CCHS students will meet their competition teammates and face off with their opponents April 1-3 at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
Students with many different talents and skills are needed to complete the project. Jobs include programming, wiring, assembly, metal work, safety assurance, website development, logo design, fundraising, and public relations.
Max Simonowicz created an artistic symbol for the team, which has dubbed itself IceStorm.
The image, a rather whimsical depiction of two robots boxing inside a snow globe, is on this year’s team buttons and will be on the team t-shirts.
On Tuesday, January 19, the team gathered in the computer room in the Industrial Arts wing of CCHS. Everyone seemed to know what to do or at least knew how to look like they knew what they were doing. Strange words and phrases were thrown around – things like “thumb drive,” “driver’s station,” and “zip ties.” Actually, zip ties aren’t as high tech as they sound – they are the plastic thingies that people use to tie up their garbage bags – but they are vital to the cause.
Comradeship was well underway. Overheard were things like, “Are you doing okay? Your fingers…,” “Would you give me a hand?” “Just so we don’t screw this up…” “I don’t see what we’re trying to look for here,” and “Let me help you.”
Most kids that didn’t graduate last year have returned for this year’s competition. Coming in about 40th out of a field of 50 was good enough to bring them back. Asked whether they consider themselves “techies,” Jana Sanders said, “We consider ourselves geeks.”
At the competition, teams will earn points for many things, including cooperation and helpfulness as well as having a whiz-bang of a robot. Theywill receive many different awards, such as for their mentors, safety measures, and gracious professionalism.
Requests for assistance are pronounced over the loudspeaker during the competition, and the teams that offer advice or even parts receive kudos from officials for their helpfulness. According to Sanders, they’re trying to teach kids to work in a group during a competition and be friendly to competitors.
Last year, an announcement was made over the loudspeaker that someone needed a flux capacitor. Had one of the teams actually come up with one, they would have made big news, since the flux capacitor was a device in the Back to the
Future
movie trilogy that allowed people to travel through time.
The competition is possible for CCHS students because of the generous support of many sponsors and vast amounts of technical assistance from local volunteers such as Jonathan Hedstrom and Tim Johnson. “This is fun for us, too,” said Hill. “I’m really glad to have these guys here to help.”
“It’s nice that Silver Bay is doing it this year for the first time,” Hill said. He hopes the Silver Bay team and the Cook County team can play an exhibition game at one of the basketball games.
More information on the competition can be found on the CCHS website (cookcountyschools. org) or at usfirst.org.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Sanders said. “Zip ties and duct tape – it’s all I need.”
Leave a Reply