Tech Talk: The FIRST Robotics Competition--Slidell Teens “Rack and Roll”

story and photography by Stephen Faure

It was hard to figure out exactly what was going on at first. Despite being briefed by a NASA engineer on what the competition was about, I had a hard time making sense of the commotion.

Wheeled aluminum robots wielding large brightly colored vinyl inner tubes assaulted a rack, which looked like a large jungle gym, in the middle of a tennis court-sized arena. Other robots attacked the ones carrying the rings. I started to get it—the robots with the rings were trying to hang the rings on the rack and the other robots were trying to block their progress. As time was called, the robots—three on each team, six total—retreated to their respective ends of the arena.

One of the three robots on each side of the arena pulled into a designated area and with a loud clacking noise dropped its sides to the floor, forming a ramp on either side of it. As the clock ticked down, the remaining two robots rolled up the ramps. Once in position, the ramps themselves pushed off the ground with a hiss of compressed air, lifting the teammate robots one foot off the ground.

And the crowd went wild. Bleachers set up on either side of the playing field in the Morial Convention Center were packed with students, teachers and parents celebrating the winning teams.

This was the exciting and hectic spectacle at the FIRST Robotics Bayou Regional, where 17 teams from Louisiana competed. The northshore was well represented by eight high schools: Bogalusa, Covington, Fontainebleau, Northshore, Pope John Paul II, St. Paul’s, Salmen and Slidell. Each team was supported financially and technically by many local and national companies, and, of course, parents and other volunteers.

Slidell’s Northshore High, whose team “Nuts and Volts” won the regional outright, and Slidell High, which moves on by virtue of winning the Rookie All-Star Award and Highest Seeded Rookie Award, are headed to the FIRST Championship in Atlanta to compete against teams from all over the world.

FIRST—For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology—is an organization founded by inventor Dean Kamen. Its goal is: “To create a world where science and technology are celebrated...where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes.”

The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard “kit of parts” and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in a series of competitions designed by Dean Kamen, Dr. Woodie Flowers, and a committee of engineers and other professionals.
This year, FIRST’s engineers came up with the “Rack and Roll” competition. The rack component of the challenge is to score points by having the robot pick up tubes and hang them at different levels on the rack, or preventing the competition from doing the same. Points are scored for both. The roll component was for the robot to deploy ramps that allied robots could roll up. Points are awarded for deploying the ramp and successful roll-ups, with a bonus awarded for the ramps that lift the robots 12 inches off the ground.

Northshore’s robot specialized in the racking tubes and rolling onto the allied robot’s ramp. Slidell’s team decided that, as a first-year team, they would concentrate on building a great ramp-robot, although they also built a functioning arm for picking up and placing tubes. Both schools’ strategies proved successful.
“I’ve seen these kids learn a lot. Some of them had never worked with a power tool; some never had participated in extracurricular activities,” observes Slidell High math teacher Quay Brisco.

After a presentation to the student body by Lockheed Martin engineers in December, sign-up sheets were placed around Slidell High. “Thirty kids showed up at the beginning, and now we’re down to about 12,” says Brisco. “The program demands a huge amount of time and attention, and the kids have so many activities that conflicts came up. Everyone here now is dedicated in their own way to reaching the goal.”

Northshore teacher Donna Johnson is pleased with the results the program brings. “The things these kids learn and the things that they do boggles the mind,” Johnson observes. “It fosters an interest in math, science and engineering far more than they could get in a classroom. But it’s not about the robots. The goal is to work with each other to put a product together with other people with grace and with ease.”

Slidell High senior Ben Franco saw a sign-up sheet in physics class and joined out of an interest in science and mechanics picked up from his dad. He and the other students, teachers and mentors faced a steep learning curve with some difficult challenges. They spent more than 40 hours machining the robot’s arm. It was snapped off in seconds during the first round of competition!

For more information (and to see how our Slidell teams fared in the finals) visit FIRST’s site at www.usfirst.org, Northshore’s team site at www.northshorerobotics.homestead.com, or Slidell’s site at www.slidellrobotics.org.