Robotics Club has prepared to blow you away with unbelievably well built robots in their upcoming competiton. Robotics Club’s varsity team have designed an ingenious twinkling robot and Junior Varsity has constructed a bamboo-themed (hence the name “Team Bambusa”) masterpiece.
The competition all happens in a 12-by-12 foot arena, these robots grab two plastic, doughnut-like rings at a time using an “arm.” They aim to place each ring onto one of the 18 pegs, which can be up to 44 inches high, in the middle of the playing area. Each ring placement earns them a certain number of points, and under a time constraint, the teams strive to rack up the highest possible number of points.
“I like to think of it as a big game of tic-tac-toe. There are a lot of strategies involved, for example, are we going to pick up two rings and put two on the top peg and get 30 points, or try for half of a line bonus?” freshman Ian Powell said. “What’s really funny is when people play defense, where they’ll park their robot right in front of the pegs. You really can’t do anything about that because you can’t touch that robot.”
On Feb. 9, Team Bambusa seized first place in the First Tech Challenge competition held at Rock Academy. Elated with the win, its captain, Powell, admits luck was on their side.
“We did really well. In the final round, there are four alliances. We got picked for the fourth alliance, which is the worst alliance, technically,” Powell said. “We beat the best alliance, which is really great. We were really stoked by that.”
Varsity, named Team Buffalo Wings, encountered a major technical difficulty. As senior John Zavidniak was prepping the robot just moments before the competition, it unexpectedly malfunctioned. The incident resulted in a tumble off the table that ended in dented metal and a damaged lift.
“There was something wrong with the controls. You’d push one direction, and it’d just go in whatever direction it chose to go. As a result, even though it wasn’t being controlled to go off the table, it did,” Zavidniak said. “However, we still won the Connect Reward. The Connect Reward is related to outreach, which is how much you are able to connect to the community around you and help people get involved with robotics. We were also able to get third for the most important award, the Inspirer award.”
After devoting much time to repairing the robot’s programming and parts, the team now deems it almost as good as new.
“At first, we played the blame game, but towards the end, we decided that it wasn’t really anyone’s fault,” junior Ray Inoue said. “A lot that needed to be done was mechanical fixing.”
With its dazzling neon green and aqua light-up robot, Team Buffalo Wings is determined to make a flashy comeback. Only two years in the making, Robotics Club has already impressed Carlsbad High with its accomplishments to date and is expected to amaze us with many more.
“We plan to win. Honestly, I think we’ll do better than we did last time, where we got 20th place out of 26. We’re trying for the Inspirer Award,” Inoue said. “Robotics is a really useful skill to have. It’s not just sitting around in a classroom but is a lot of active doing. We want to get better and follow our mission of spreading the importance of science and technology.”
