St. Tammany News

Six weeks of hard work and long hours paid off for 35 Northshore High School students when they became regional winners at the regional robotics competition last weekend in New Orleans.

The team now advances to the national competition April 12-14 in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta along with the Slidell High School team, which was named best overall rookie team.

SHS' "THE IDEAL MACHINE"

NHS was one of six schools from St. Tammany Parish competing against 36 schools from several states March 8-10 at the Bayou Regional For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology Robotics Competition in the Earnest N. Morial Convention Center.

Robotics teams from Salmen High School, NHS, Covington High School, St. Paul's School, SHS and Fontainebleau High School spent three days showcasing their robot creations and competing against high school teams from Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas, Massachusetts, California and Georgia.

Northshore's robot, "The Nutcracker," standing 6 feet tall with a moveable arm and the ability to grab objects, raced back and forth across the floor, grabbing plastic inner tubes and squeezing between other robots being controlled by students partitioned on the side of the arena.

"The Nutcracker" won the Rockwell Automation Innovation in Control award for the robot's computer system.

The 28 students who spent 50 hours or more on the robot went to the competition, said Donna Johnson, the team sponsor. Now, the team is preparing for April.

"There will be tough competition, but it will be worth it," Johnson said.

The team won't see their robot again until the nationals. The robot was shipped directly to Atlanta after the regional competition. Students took notes following the competition and plan to rebuild the parts to bring with them to Atlanta for repairs. "The Nutcracker" suffered some minor damage during the competition.

For the regional competition, NHS parents shuttled students to New Orleans. But now the school is raising money to hire a bus for the competition.

Johnson said this year's success could be attributed to better organization and dedication.

Last year's robot had not worked out well, Johnson said. The team had tried to build the robot "to do everything," she said, and that tactic had failed. Plus, the team was unorganized, and students who were involved would work individually.

This year, Johnson said the team not only concentrated on specific abilities of their robot, but also was much more organized.

Team members were divided into three different teams, each working on a different component of the robot, including the arm, the controls and the base. And, six support teams also were set up, and each student had to participate in one support team.

"Whatever we did this year worked," she said.

Slidell High School's robot, "The Ideal Machine," was a "blocking and ramp robot," lifting other robots on a ramp and earning the Rookie All-Star award and the Highest Rookie Seed award.

"There's a lot of pressure right now to raise the money to go," said Bryan Rock, a sponsor for the SHS Robotics Team. SHS will be riding with NHS to the competition. Both teams are trying to raise money to pay a $5,000 registration fee.

Anyone wanting to help the schools get to Atlanta may call Johnson at 640-2234.

Hundreds of students participated in the regional competition in the Morial Convention Center, all wearing different brightly colored T-shirts and shouting among themselves as they rushed between events.

The whir of remote-controlled machines was barely audible under the loud roar of cheering fans as high school students pushed and pulled an assortment of odd-shaped devices.

The waiting area, or the pit, was just as hectic as teammates would rush to exchange out spare parts or do final touchups on their robots.

The 2007 competition officially began Jan. 6 with a regional kickoff at the Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss. During the kickoff, FIRST presented the "Rack 'N' Roll" game and parts kits to participating teams.

The Rack 'N' Roll puts six teams on a 54-foot by 26-foot-8 field with a center "rack" structure with 24 "spider" legs. Three teams made up an alliance competing against the other three teams.

The teams have a little more than two minutes to showcase the abilities of their robots to maneuver inflatable tubes onto the spider legs. Teams earned points based on their robot's tracking systems, speed, driver control and lifting. Teams could score additional points by making it to their home zone by the end of the match and by lifting another robot 4 inches or more off the floor before the final buzzer sounded.

Robotics' teams were given six weeks to complete their robots for the state competition. Kit guidelines were standard for all states.

Without bumpers, robots had to fit in a 28-by-38-inch rectangle. Depending on weight, robots could be up to 6 feet tall. Robots could weigh up to 120 pounds without the battery, but taller robots had to weigh less than shorter robots.

Depending on height and weight, robots were put into separate competition classifications. Four-foot-tall robots weighing 120 pounds were in class I; 5-foot-tall robots weighing 110 pounds were class II; and 6-foot-tall robots weighing 100 pounds were class III.

St. Paul's was named regional finalist after it made it to the final match of the regional competition.

However, their robot, "Robotic Ooze," won't make it to the national competition.

"I couldn't have paid money for an experience like this," said Weese Petersen, computer teacher at St. Paul's and sponsor of the Robotics team. "The harder you work at something, the more you put of yourself into something, the greater the reward at the end.

This was the first year St. Paul's competed in FIRST. Petersen said she is trying to get a robotics class within the next couple years set up at St. Paul's.

Altogether the team had about nine active members, she said, including one member, Frank Duvic from Pope John Paul II High School. No team was set up for PJP, so Duvic said he had to search throughout St. Tammany for a robotics team he could join.

Petersen also said she hopes to try to get a St. Tammany Parish competition set up in the near future.