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High school robotic teams battle in strategic competition

Written by Dustin L. Dangli

Monday, 02 February 2009 07:10 PM

Home school student Ethan Bender makes a final adjustment on his robot before the preliminary round of the First Tech Challenge Southwest Regional Championship on Saturday morning in the Maverick Activities Center. (The Shorthorn: Stephanie Goddard)

The Metal Militia team robot drops pucks into the goal to earn points at the First Tech Challenge Southwest Regional Championship on Saturday afternoon in the Maverick Activities Center. The team with the most points at the end of the match wins. (The Shorthorn: Stephanie Goddard)

Connor O’Brien and his team, The Fighting Pickles, tinkered with their robot at 8 a.m. Saturday.

Fifteen team tables laid barren in the early morning on the Maverick Activities Center basketball courts, except for one table in the far corner.

The Fighting Pickles’ robot, affectionately called “The Pickle,” competed in the Southwest Regional Competition of the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Tech Challenge. The College of Engineering hosted the event where high school students from Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana pitted robots against one another in a game of skill to move on to a national competition in Atlanta.

“You know, like killer robots — just not killer,” O’Brien said.

The teams spent months prepping for the day’s game — Face Off.

Eight trays, four for each team, were placed around a 12-square-foot field of foam tiles.

The trays held eight pucks for teams to grab and use to score. The teams combine at random in the qualifying rounds to make two-on-two matches and try to get plastic pucks onto scoring platforms. The higher the platform, the higher the score.

Each team’s robot was built for a specific strategy in mind.

Last year’s winning team, Hammered Steel, walked in confidently.

“It’s child’s play,” Hammered Steel member Andrew Onorato said.

The team’s strategy was to go big and score high, said Chris Overton, Hammered Steel captain and driver.

The Hammered Steel robot had a basket to scoop up the pucks it would then dump onto the five-point goal swiftly and repeatedly.

The strategy allowed the team to win this year’s tournament, its third in a row.

The Fighting Pickles’ robot used an arm scoop with a pulley system to pick up pucks and then dump them into the three-point circle. This strategy took the team to the semi-finals.

With their bright yellow shirts and a large banner displaying sponsors, Warriors turned heads.

Last year, they made it to the finals, but lost to Hammered Steel.

They repeated that fate this year.

Warriors captain Ciara Waldron said this competition’s robot was more of a secondary project. They focused on a larger robot for another competition and didn’t have much time to work on this competition’s machine.

The robot experienced technical problems throughout — ultimately losing in the semifinals.

The Fighting Pickles saw controversy when their robot failed to respond to the driver’s controls and also lost in the semifinals.

Driver Gary Privett hid his eyes behind reflective eye wear and fought back tears.

Team adviser James Wilson told his team not to be angry but to find out what went wrong so it doesn’t happen again in a later tournament.

O’Brien said the tournament went well for his team, and it taught a lot for the next tournament. His team went home with the Inspire award for its “gracious professionalism” and overall work ethic with other teams.

Even though he didn’t win, O’Brien said he was happy to fulfill his dream.

“I thought it’d be really cool to make a robot, you know,” he said. “It’s every kid’s dream to make one.”
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 07 April 2009 08:11 PM )

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