In the first weekend of January, they were given a box of parts and told to start creating.
The 34 members of the Red Alert Robotics team at Center Grove High School immediately started building a robot that would eventually get them a bid to state competition.
They spent six days a week, working about three hours daily to design, code and build a robot that would stack blocks on a scale. This weekend they are competing at the state with the robot the team painstakingly spent the past few months of their lives on.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryThe group will compete in the Indiana High School Robotic Competition through FIRST robotics today and Saturday.
Teams who make it to state have earned enough points over two district competitions to put them in the top 32 teams in the state. Center Grove is ranked fourth in points heading into this weekend’s competition, said Rachel Miller, mentor for the team.
The world competition in Detroit is at stake. Nine teams from Indiana will earn a spot at the world competition by performing well with their robot, or by snagging one of several awards that show leadership in the community or innovation in engineering.
Getting to state has meant long weeks of practices for the dozens of students who make up the Red Alert team at Center Grove.
Team across the state are given their task and a box of parts and told to design a robot that would complete the same task at competitions, Miller said.
Robots are designed and coded to be able to pick up a block and score points by putting the block on the scale. Teams compete in alliances of three at district and state competitions.
How each robot is designed to best complete the task is up to each team. All the work comes down to a few two and a half minute matches at state and world competition.
Center Grove students sat around a white board and tossed around ideas. Students then split into separate groups to tackle smaller projects needed to build the robots, Claire Kuntz, a sophomore team member said.
Some students worked on building the drive train of the robot. A team decided what the best way to score points would be and designed elements on the robot to accomplish it.
Other students went to work on projects that could snag the team a coveted award and an automatic bid to worlds, such as the Chairman’s Award, which is given to teams who spread the message of robotics and STEM education to the community.
District competition allowed the students to earn points for state and to see exactly what they needed to change and tweak on their robot to make it more successful. Students watched other robots during competition to get other ideas, freshman Annalise Tugan said.
For example, Center Grove students noticed that their robot’s arms were bending and that would needed fixed after district, Kuntz said.
A dozen adult mentors from the community help them get started on the ideas they have. If students have ideas, it is the mentors job to talk to them about why it might work and to help them get ideas on how they can pull their idea off, Nathan Coulombe, a mentor, said.
For state, students spent time making slight changes to their practice robot. Once they were satisfied with the changes they made to their practice robot, students could make the final change on their competition robot. FIRST rules only allow teams to work on their competition robot for six hours between competitions.
The time crunch means students have to first figure out the exact change they want to make by working on their practice robot, Coulombe said.
A group of parents raise money and manage the $50,000 to $60,000 budget that teams use to educate about STEM in the community, register for competitions, get enough pieces to build a competition robot and a practice robot for varsity and junior varsity teams and get dozens of students to and from multiple competitions, Coulombe said.
The time the students spend on their robot is not about winning, Kuntz said.
Students learn leadership and teamwork skills that are integral in robotics and are skills all the students can use anywhere, she said.
“It is a lot more about the actual experience than winning,” Kuntz said.
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<strong>What:</strong> Indiana State Robotics Championship.
<strong>Who:</strong> Center Grove Robotics.
<strong>When:</strong> Qualification matches are 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. today and 9:30 a.m. Saturday. Playoff matches are 2 p.m. Saturday
<strong>Where:</strong> Kokomo Memorial Gymnasium, 5 E.Superior St., Kokomo.
<strong>Admission:</strong> Free
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