Friday, April 30, 2010
By Robin Janotta
and Zack Rosenfeld
Staff Writers
The Beach Cities Robotics team won the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Robotics Competition World Championships in Atlanta, Ga. from April 15-17.
The FIRST tournament consisted of 340 teams from around the world, including contenders from Brazil, Australia and Israel. After initial wins against teams from Ontario, Canada, and Bloomfield Hills, Mich., the team triumphed quickly over its final opponent from Chicago, Ill.
“It’s a completely indescribable feeling. We played hard and had a lot people watching every match. We put a ton of time into designing a good robot,” junior Alex Davis said.
The team, which consists of Mira Costa and Redondo Union High School students, advanced to the championships after qualifying. The team has not won first place at the World Championships since 2001.
“It was a really great experience. We stayed about four blocks away from the stadium, and it felt great to be the center of the biggest room I’ve ever seen,” junior Nighelles David said.
To take part in the competition, teams constructed robots during a six-week period. The BCR team began building its robot in early January with a sponsorship from Northrop Grumman.
These robots then competed in “robot soccer,” which is a game played with 12 balls and four goals. There is also an eight-foot high tower from which the robot can hang to earn the team extra points.
“It is a very well simulated version of soccer which makes it easier to relate to for a person who likes sports,” senior Anton Schuetze-Coburn said. “It is a lot better than last year’s format.”
There are 18 students and seven mentors on the team.Workers from Northrop Grumman and GKN Aerospace volunteered their time as mentors. These mentors contribute their engineering experience to help the students with the manufacture and design process.
The team owes much of its success to the experience gained from previous victories. Senior Ryan Sharp has been “driving,” or controlling the robot, for four years with senior Anton Schuetze-Coburn as “co-driver.”
“Robotics is a great experience, and I’ve always been interested in it through the last four years. I’ve been co-driver with Ryan for three years, and we’ve always had the same goals,” Schuetze-Coburn said. “As a senior, it was hard to balance everything, but it paid off in the end and even if we had not won, it was still the most rewarding experience of my life.”
The team met every day except Tuesdays and Thursdays at Redondo’s laboratory leading up to the championship. The competition required the team to design, create and assemble parts as well as program the robot’s controls.
The team built many prototypes, eventually producing one final design. The team says that this design was chosen due to its favored strategies in addition to technical aspects.
“We all wrote down all of our ideas and narrowed them down. We tested how everything works and eventually came out to designing the robot we have now,” junior Karen Izumoto said.
The robotics team has high hopes for future competitions, including games in the off-season. During the summer, the team plans to recruit new team members and host workshops to practice and earn more championships in the coming years.
“The win hasn’t really set in yet. Its pretty weird to win one day, and then the next just go back to normal life and school,” Izumoto said.
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