Robotics comes to Lind classrooms

Lind High School now has a robotics team among their high school students that plans to participate in the largest robotics competition in the United States this upcoming year. The team will consist of 20 students and they will be building a robot to use in a competition in 2012.

The FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international competition that allows high school students the opportunity to be innovators. The FRC began in 1992, and each year the number of teams drastically increase worldwide.

The robotics team began after Andy Williams applied and received two grants to assist them with the competition. They were awarded a $7,000 grant from Washington First Robotics, the organization that hosts the robotics competition.

They are also the recipients of a $6,500 grant from NASA that will help fund the registration costs, potential trip to nationals and price of parts for the project.

On Jan. 7, the robotics team will travel to Cheney and receive the basic kit to start their project. They will then have six weeks to build a robot to enter into the competition.

The robotics group is segmented into a business group and an engineering group. Inside of these two teams are various sub-groups.

The business group is led by Coach Andy Williams. Mackenzie Ellis and Lexie Whitaker are part of the media and public relations sub-group. Brandon Knodel and Alicia Bolin are in charge for the spirit sub-group. Kaytlin Phillips is the secretary/history for the business group while Andrea Bennett and Aaron Hayes are in charge of fundraising.

Coach Thomas Pulliam will lead the engineering group. Bryson O’Neill, Scott Diefenbach and Andy Derrick will be in charge of design sub-group. Tommy Schuler, Alex Robinson, Seth Snelling and Casey Sackmann will run Programming and operations.

Derrick Laird, Cory Goble, Grayson Morris, Josh Van Slyke, Salvador Huitron and Ricardo Guizar make up the building and maintenance sub-group for the engineering team.

The robot that they build will have to be able to be mobile, has to be able to pick something up and has to be able to put it somewhere. The robot must be able to move efficiently in order to win the competition.

Every year, the challenge at the competition changes but it always includes the basic concept of picking something up and putting it back down.

During those six weeks after the group receives the parts for their robot, they will have to design, program and assemble the robot. The group will be able to purchase certain parts to add to the assembly of their robot but the robot is not able to surpass the weight of 120 pounds.

The students are currently learning software for Labview, the program that is used for controlling their robot. Pulliam and Williams traveled to Redmond, Wash., with a few students to attend a conference for FRC where they learned more about the competition.

“I applied and I didn’t realize how big a deal it was,” said Williams. “Kids really get into it and learn innovation at the same time.”

On Feb. 21, they will put the robot in a bag and seal it, being unable to touch the robot until the competition in April.

The regional competition will be held in Cheney April 4-7, 2012. From there, six teams will move on and compete in St. Louis, Mo. There is also a Rookie All-star award and as a first year team, the Lind team has a chance of winning that award.

At the competition, the robotics groups from across Washington will be placed into teams. There will be ten rounds of groups competing against each other, but six teams will be selected for each round and it will be three against three.

The teams will be judged on their performance during these competitions, but they will mostly be judged for how memorable they are. Each team has a pit area, and in this area is where the robot is parked and worked on.

The judges consist of 24 judges that are almost always CEOs of major tech fields from across the state and country. The teams will be judged on memorability, logo, spirit, how they reply to the experience, what they have learned and how involved the team is in their home community.

“We have to have innovation for the future and this helps the kids do that,” said Williams.

If the Lind team wins any of the six awards, they will travel to the World Championships at the end of April. In the meantime, they will continue to expand their knowledge of robotics and prepare for the kick off next month in Cheney.