The Chelsea Standard
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
CHS robotics team shows few difficulties
PUBLISHED: April 19, 2007
"Technical Difficulties," the Chelsea High School Robotics Team 1502, is in its third year of competing.
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For Inspiration and Recognition of Science & Technology (F.I.R.S.T) was started by NASA's Woody Flowers and Dean Kaman 16 years ago and is designed to bring technology back into the high schools.
Today there are more than 1,800 teams world wide competing in competitions and events.
CHS Team 1502 had a great rookie year, winning the Rookie Inspiration Award at the Great Lakes Regional in Ypsilanti. The team won the Rookie High seed award and made it to the semifinals at the Boiler Maker Regional held on the campus of Purdue University. The team also attended the Grand Valley Regional in Grand Rapids.
The second year came with many "Technical Difficulties," but the group still did very well.
"We rebuilt our robot at the Great Lakes Regional and at Purdue we finished in 16th place and were selected by the No. 1 team to go into the semifinals," said Mike Kizer, a mentor for the Chelsea team."Our alliance worked its way up to third place and we had managed to be selected early in the year to go to Atlanta where the finals are played."
There were 344 teams, 18 countries, 4 divisions in Atlanta. The Curry division had 86 teams and Chelsea was briefly in sixth place before getting knocked back to 19th.
"Now in our third year we had finished fifth in St Louis and then we were selected by the No. 2 seeded team to go into the semifinals where we fought our way to second place at the Detroit regional," Kizer said. "We are competing in Atlanta again this year."
"The team madeit to the quarterfinals where they picked two others teams to be in their alliance with them," said Ryan Schroeder. "This next match was a tough match for the pit crew due to a drive train that had a chain that would pop off the wheel. In between the first quarterfinals match and the second round of the same match, the five pit members worked fast and efficiently to get the robot working again. Though in the next round there was apparently not enough time to fix it completely because it popped again right at the beginning of the next round."
The robotics "season" starts the competition in the second week of January.
"This is where we learn what this year's game is all about," Kizer said. "We get a basic kit of parts and all the rules. We then have six weeks to design, build and program a machine that can compete. Once the robot ships we only see it at the competitions."
The team has mentors who find the resources needed to help the students achieve their goals.
"We assist and advise, but this program is for the kids," Kizer said. "They are the ones that make it happen. We have many positions on the team; drive train, electronics, manipulation, C programming, CAD, 3D animation, PR, web design, organizational needs and more."
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