The Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School’s Robotics Club has been working diligently for months in preparation for the Southern New England VEX Robotics Competition. The event was hosted at Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester on March 5 and 6.
OCRVTHS students John Barns, Ben Jenson, Jesse Goodwin, Jasper Tan, Tanner Safford, Nickolaus Smith, along with teacher and advisor Dan Brush, successfully qualified in January, launching them and their metallic creation a little closer towards the possibility of attending the world championship to be held in Louisville, Kentucky in April.
Only a few days before the regional Worcester event, they explained the robot’s technical capabilities.
The students were given an objective, a goal, a task that their robot must be able to complete. For this event, the robots must be able to launch balls into a net, grab orbs from the playing surface that will give their team extra points, and partner with another team’s robot by coupling the devices in synchronized movement while also fending off their opponent’s attempts to do the same.
In order to accomplish this, the team starts at the end and works backwards or as they emphasized, “we reverse engineer the robot.”
Engineering is indeed what these students must do in order to create a fully functioning robot and considering that this is the first full year for the robotics club, their uphill journey pits them against larger schools with seasoned teams.
One critical element that is a requirement of the competition is to keep a journal, or log, that details every single task and problem-solving necessity the team worked through during the development of the robot. This journal, Brush said, constitutes a significant number of points the students must earn. Their ability to transcribe the involved steps they powered through in order to build the robot and then have it function with pinpoint accuracy fell to senior and team captain Smith.
Throughout the development of the project, the team had to consistently solve engineering problems from the design process through the actual building of the robot.
They did not work in a vacuum, however. Like many of the programs OCRVTHS offers their students, cross pollination of shop talents is required to get a task done. In the case of the robotics team, they leaned on carpentry, machine, graphics, as well as the electrical engineering shops.
As Sunday, March 6 came to a close, Brush said during a telephone interview, “It was really good … what we accomplished this year is amazing.” He continued, “The competition was tough, some schools had a lot of financial resources.”
And although this team won’t be advancing, Brush said, “We are not stopping.” He said that the students had to face lots of trial and error episodes throughout the weekend, but “they were determined to make the most of the experience.”
“The students learned more this weekend then they ever would in regular class,” Brush shared. “This was our first year … we are going back!”
By Marilou Newell
