If you like the idea of building a robot, robotics may be for you. It gives you the chance to build a robot to complete a certain task. Eventually, you will get to take the robot to competition.
“We participate in the BEST (Boosting, Engineering, Science, and Technology) robotics competition,” said Erick Underwood, robotics coach. “It is a six-week national competition that has locations for competition all across the country. We participate in the Kansas BEST competition for regionals and if we were to place highly we would go to the national competition.”
Every year, the competition changes.
“My first year the competition required a robot that could clean up after a natural disaster,” said Underwood. “This involved fixing electrical lines and placing underground pipes. The most recent competition had teams build a robot focused on destroying a building and sorting the materials for recycling. There is no way to know what the competition will involve until it is announced at the beginning.”
That’s not all for the competitions.
“It is completely team based,” started Underwood. “There are many categories to compete in so many teams divide their teams to tackle different aspects of the competition. There is a written portion to the competition. Some schools put together physical displays. As for the robot building, the robot and coding are required to compete.”
For the robot building, they have to come up with a design. The design changes based on the competition.
“Our first year the team went with a forklift style robot and our most recent robot had more of a crane design,” said Underwood.
Physical design isn’t the only thing when it comes to robot building. The robot also has to be designed to do certain tasks.
“The robot was designed to push items into certain areas as well as grab and sort other larger items,” said Underwood. “It was designed to be versatile and accomplish most tasks that were through at it. It was also designed to be able to turn in tight spaces in order to prevent collateral damage to other objects on the course.”
Building the whole robot involves a process, starting with building it.
“We build it from scratch from a base set of materials,” said Underwood. “This means we take pieces of plywood, metal, and PVC along with the necessary electronics to make a fully functional robot. Building is just the first step. We must also code the robot in order for it to work. The electronics won’t work if nothing is telling them what to do. As we build it, we catalog what we do in ogre to submit the written portion of the competition.”
To build the robot, you have to have a team.
“We had seven people help us this last year,” said Underwood. “The size of the team doesn’t change if you can compete or not. There are some teams with only one person and others with up to eighty. The amount of people do however change how much you can get done. More people on a team allow for more people to specialize or to have specific tasks. More people allow for a lot more to get done in the limited time of the competition.”
It takes time and commitment to get everything done.
“The competition takes a lot of time and commitment,” said Underwood. “The competition is six weeks long in a normal year. We had students coming in the mornings for 15-30 minutes and 2 hours on Saturdays. This comes out to over 20 hours of work time and we still never seem to have enough.”
With all the work comes some success and some challenges.
“We have done a great job of finding and committing to designs,” said Underwood. “Decisiveness is very important in a competition like this due to the limited time we have. We also do a great job of solving problems as they arise. If we have a wheel not working we quickly redesign and solve any issues. Some of the issues we have faced are tech issues. We have had controllers disconnect in the middle of competition and have also had parts break. When these things malfunction it is difficult for a successful run.”
Being able to solve problems is part of why Lucas Newcomer, a junior in robotics, likes robotics.
“I like that when we have a problem, we can solve it in a way with the certain amount of materials that we have,” said Newcomer. “We have to kind of think about how we are going to go about doing it.”
That is just part of the fun when it comes to robotics.
“I just have fun with it,” said Newcomer.
Photos by Erick Underwood