Robot puts team on track to success

The robotics team is having a dinner to raise funds to go to a national competition.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Rick Willmitch walks past what looks like a rectangular cart carrying intricately woven wires, gears and a blue police light.
But the unusually-shaped wheels reveal that this is no cart.
It's a robot, a robot that has broken new ground in the robotics world and caught the eye of the U.S. Army.
And it was built by a team of Chaney High School students.
"This is Grandpa," Willmitch says, waving a hand toward the machine that sits in a Chaney High School art classroom.
In the hallway is the dad, chugging over a cardboard box and up the side of a handcart. Junior is still in pieces on an art room table.
Willmitch is a parent adviser of the Chaney Robotics Team. The team of about 20 students is also advised by retired Delphi Packard tool-and-die maker Frank Naypaver and by art teacher Inge Farragher, who took over for science teacher Steven Pusztay when he went on military leave last winter.
Successful competition
The first robot was built for the FIRST -- For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology -- competition in Cleveland last school year. It was asked to stack crates, move them over a bridge and climb and rest on another robot.
With its sides painted with cow spots (Chaney's mascot is the cowboy), cheerleaders urging it on and team members holding a "Cow Tippin' is Illegal" sign, the robot was successful. It also was the only robot, among about 200, to climb up and hold on.
That competition is what hooked team member Mark Sullivan, a junior.
"After the competition, you want to come back," he said.
They key to the robot's success, Naypaver said, is the cam wheel-and-track design. Naypaver, president of the Youngstown Inventor's Club, has a patent pending on the invention. He said the U.S. Army has expressed interest in the robot and Naypaver is working with Theiss Aviation in Salem to secure a research and development grant from the Army.
Sophomore Mike Willmitch, who helped sand cast the wheels, describes the wheel design as "a star with rounded tips."
Mike said he joined the Chaney team after crafting robots from Legos when he was on a robotics team in junior high.
"Everyone who knows me knows that, since I was a little kid, I liked taking stuff apart and figuring out how it works," he said. "Taking an idea and making it into something that works is a big first for me."
The earlier robots have hexagon-shaped aluminum wheels.
The six rippled tracks attach to the wheels and move in a spiral as the wheels turn. Naypaver compares the movement to a person walking in cross-country snowshoes.
As such, the robots can climb and move over rocks or snow embankments, opening the machines up for dozens of applications. They could assist police, firefighters and bomb squads or enter burning buildings; they could retrieve wounded soldiers on a battlefield, explore space or be used to help wheelchairs climb stairs.
"These three robots here are the only robots in the world that do what they do," Naypaver said, adding that the first robot has been featured on ESPN, in engineering magazines and on the wall in the mansion of inventor and researcher Dean Kamen, the founder of FIRST. "In five or six years, these robots will be everywhere and these kids here are going to be able to look at it and say, 'I was part of that.'"
"It's pretty exciting," Mike said. "I think it's pretty cool that I actually helped with something that could be useful."
"Our concepts can get Youngstown back on the map," said Mark.
"It's not the steel city," Naypaver added. "It's the robot city."
Funding for contest
The students "drilled a lot of extra holes and cut a lot of extra pieces" before perfecting their system. The second robot, built over the summer, is a prototype for the robot they're currently building for March competitions in St. Louis and Cleveland. They also hope to attend a national competition in Georgia if they raise the funding.
Thus far, the team has received some assistance for regional meets from the city school board. (But they seek a budget of $26,000. A fund-raising spaghetti dinner and silent auction will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 8 at St. Anne's Church at Raccoon and Kirk roads in Austintown. Tickets, $5.50 for adults and $3.50 for children younger than 10, are available at the door.)
Requirements
For the competitions, FIRST sends each team a package of electronics and controls. Teams have six weeks to build their own bodies and program their robots to do various tasks. In this year's competition, the robots must throw a ball.
Naypaver had discussed the walking-robot idea with George Lazar from Warren G. Harding High School in Warren, where Naypayver volunteers in the metal/wood shop. His first thought was to create a "Star Wars-type" walking robot but he knew the six-week time frame would be too tight. He came up with the walking wheel-and-track idea after watching a hay baler.
Naypaver said this is the first time new technology has come out of a FIRST competition.
"Normally when we build a robot, they're just so much junk after the competition; they're just wheeled, radio-powered cars," Naypaver said. "I told George my students could build something worthwhile for humanity."