Photo by Lester Smith
Preparing for the upcoming initial scrimmage of this season, the SHS-WL FIRST Robotics team practices with last year’s robot at the Zak Ambulance Center on January 15. From the left: Stephanie Devita driving the robot, Holly Tseka at the laptop, with Pranav Saravanan and Benjamin Ouellette waiting their turn.
Thirty FIRST Robotics teams from Connecticut and Massachusetts are registered to attend the Suffield Shakedown scrimmage for the program’s annual competition, being held at Suffield High School on Saturday, February 18. This will be the first opportunity for the teams to exercise their new robots and their operational skills.
This year’s challenge was announced on January 7, when the teams had only six weeks to design, build, and program a robot to compete in the new game, called Steamworks, whose initial publicity is reminiscent of early science fiction and the steam punk genre of some decades ago. In this game the three-team alliances gain points when their robots collect and load wiffle balls of “coal” into the firebox of a “boiler” and separately pass dinner-plate-size plastic gears up to two team members on an “airship,” who must assemble the gears to operate four hand-cranked propellers and a central helical airscrew. Extra points are earned at the end of the short round if the robot has satisfactorily shinnied up a rope.
Aces High, the joint Suffield-Windsor Locks team, is hard at work on creating their new robot, which may use the same, dependable, mobile base as last year’s game. The public is welcome to attend the scrimmage in the SHS gym on the 18th, free. The action can be vigorous. Practice rounds come in the morning; opening ceremonies are scheduled for noon, with competition rounds to follow. Watch and cheer; Steamworks sounds like fun.