Fitch hosts Ohio-Pa. robotics competition
By ELISE McKEOWN SKOLNICK
AUSTINTOWN
Fitch High School’s main gym has never seen action quite like the robot competition played there Saturday.
Teams of high school students from throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania took part in the 2014 Mahoning Valley Robotics Challenge. The Northeast Ohio FIRST Robotics Alliance event is the first in the Mahoning Valley to showcase these robots competing on a regulation playing field.
“It’s an off-season event,” said Andy Yantes, event coordinator. “This is a chance for these teams to play the game again, on a cheaper scale, smaller scale.”
The regular Robotics season begins in January when teams are given the season’s challenge. They have six weeks to design and build a robot, then competition starts. The season ends in April, with the world championships. Regular season events cost about $5,000 for teams to attend, Yantes said. Saturday’s event was $100.
“Some of these teams only go to one, so this gives them another opportunity to go out there, use what they’ve built, and play the game again,” Yantes said.
Kelli Catullo of Boardman brought her sons Antonio, 7, and Luciano, 1, to see the robots.
“Antonio’s really into science,” Catullo said.
Antonio said he’d like to build a robot someday.
“I wonder if you can make a robot that talks, that looks like a human,” he said.
The event was fun, he said.
“It’s very interesting,” Kelli said. “It’s awesome they have the locals schools being able to do this.”
More than 20 teams participated in Saturday’s challenge, including teams from Warren, Champion, Girard, Austintown, Canfield and Cardinal Mooney participated.
This year is the last robotics competition season for 18-year-old Sean Genova of Warren.
“It’s been a pretty great three years,” he said.
He enjoys the teamwork involved, he said.
“I see our team as a really dysfunctional family, but when it comes down to it, the teamwork definitely comes through,” he said.
His team didn’t win Saturday.
“But I don’t really see it as that bad of a thing,” he said.
The Warren G. Harding team has some new members.
“I just wanted to see them get their feet wet so that way, come the actual season, they can get what they need done. It’s great experience,” Genova said.
The years involved with robotics solidified Genova’s career plans. He hopes to attend Youngstown State University and become a physicist.
FIRST, For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, was founded by inventor Dean Kamen and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Woodie Flowers to inspire young people’s greater interest and participation in science, technology, engineering and math endeavors and to lead them into STEM career fields. FIRST offers four levels of robotics programs for students in grades K-12.
The Circuitbirds of Canfield High School, CardinalBots of Columbus and Stellar Robotics of Mansfield took first place in the competition.
Three teams also finished second: Tenacious Drones of Parma; Falco Tech of Austintown and Robots R Us of Eaton.