A robot constructed by the Sobrato High School’s Robotics Team had its screws on right Dec. 1, besting the field of 16 schools during the FIRST Tech Challenge at the Play Space in San Jose.
“Our team created a very impressive robot, which could reliably complete all of the tasks at hand except for the pull up, which no other team was able to do either,” commented team leader Jared Gunsky, who controlled the robot’s bucket, lift and flag raiser at the competition. Teammate Justin Lyle maneuvered the robot. The team was also responsible for leading the design and building the robot.
Gunsky explained Sobrato’s robot was designed with seven motors and six drive wheels, an arm-like design lift mechanism and bucket made out of Legos with two revolving wheels at the front to take in and spit out up to four cubes.
Each competing robotics team constructed a robot, no bigger than a 18-by-18-by-18 cubic inches, keeping in mind all the tasks that they would be asked to complete.
Split into two parts, the competition consisted of a 30-second autonomous round, where the robot runs completely on its own, and then a two-minute round in which drivers control the robot.
This year’s challenge was based on maneuvering small 2-by-2-by-2 plastic cubes. In the autonomous period, teams had 30 seconds to move a preloaded block from the robot into an elevated basket and then park on a ramp.
In the two minute driver-controlled period, teams were asked to load as many blocks into four baskets, which balanced on a pendulum. The more balanced the pendulum is at the end of the two-minute period, the more points a team receives. In the last 30 seconds, teams are allowed to raise a flag, which is positioned at the corner of the arena. Additionally, the team can try to completely lift the robot off the ground via a pull-up bar in the middle of the arena. Both tasks warrant bonus points.
The team victory qualified Sobrato for an upcoming regional competition in 2014.
“We do not know what to expect in the regional because this is the first year we qualified,” explained Gunsky.
Coach Monica Orbin is also is charge of software for team robot; programming the robot’s controls; and writing the robot’s autonomous code.
