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Robots shoot basketballs
By Jordan Cohen
WARREN
Eileen Yantes, 16, smiled broadly as her three-consecutive free throws hit the backboard and bounced through a basketball hoop outside the National Packard Museum.
Actually, the Austintown Fitch junior launched the free throws with a remote controller; the robot created by her high-school robotics team made the shots.
So did the robot operated by the Warren G. Harding team, the “Delphi Elite,” which made nearly all of its free throws — a success rate that might make LeBron James, whose free-throw accuracy has been suspect during some clutch situations, a bit envious.
Fitch, Harding and Champion brought out their “Rumble Robots” at the museum Saturday for Robotics Day, a display of student engineering and ingenuity. The schools’ are members of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a national organization that sets the rules for robotics competition.
“We want to convey the excitement of sports into our robotics competition,” said Travis Hoffman, a Delphi electrical engineer who mentors the Harding team. “We’re not rivals, though, and we support and sustain each other.”
“My dad talked me into joining the team, and I help raise the funds,” said Yantes, but her father, Andy, an AT&T engineer and team mentor, said his daughter has made an even greater contribution.
“She’s quite good at this,” the elder Yantes said. “She rebuilt [our] robot’s transmission.”
The team’s robots are similar in design with a wheeled base and a protruding tube that shoots basketballs that are somewhat smaller than the regulation size. The students place the balls at the base and electronically raise them up the tube with their remotes, which control the robot movement and the shots. The robots have hit shots from 25 feet, long enough for a three-pointer in the NBA.
However, Rumble Robots is not about sports. “It’s about STEM — science, technology, engineering and math,” Hoffman said.
The students agree.
“I liked being able to build it and see it work successfully,” said Tyler Nimmagadda, who graduated from Harding earlier this week. He attributed his three years on the team as a factor in his decision to study engineering and physics at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the fall.
“Robotics was something I never heard of when I joined, but I wound up loving it,” said Samantha Young, 16, a member of the Champion Lightning Bots. Young said she and her 25-member team did all of the wiring and programming of the robot that they named “Will You Marry Me.”
“We called it that just to see what kind of reactions we’d get from the crowd,” said another team member.
The competition, particularly during the construction phase, can be intense. As required by FIRST, the teams have to build their “bots” in six weeks, meet height and length specifications and are limited on the amount they can spend on parts.
“The actual cost can’t be more than $3,500 on parts, and we spent around $2,000,” said Dennis Heberlein, Southington, who mentors Champion. Sponsors help defray additional expenses.
Young said that FIRST maintains another rule to keep the competition friendly. “You can’t do anything that could hurt another robot,” she said.
The three teams say their robots have attracted more classmates into robotics and increased their interest in science and math.
“When I first started, we only had around eight students,” said Andy Yantes, the mentor of the Fitch Falcon Tech team. “In just a few years, we’ve grown to 38 members.”