FIRST Robotics team puts on demonstration for school board – Cheboygan Daily Tribune

Kortny Hahn Staff Writer, @khahnCDT @khahnCDT

INDIAN RIVER- After doing very well at its last competition of the year, the Inland Lakes Schools FIRST Robotics team put on a demonstration of what their robot could do for the board of education.

They did really, really well this year, so they wanted to come down and make sure they kind of show it off a little bit, said Inland Lakes teacher and robotics adviser Kelly LaPeer.

The team competed in two different competitions this year, one in Gaylord and one in Traverse City. They didn't do so well at the Gaylord competition due to several software issues and an electrical issue.

Once they got that worked out, there was no stopping them. They just took off and did really well the rest of that competition, said LaPeer. But they had gotten themselves in such a hole that Gaylord didn't work out real great.

When the team got ready for its Traverse City competition, they made sure they had all of the changes made and everything was ready to go, just the way they wanted it. At that competition, they took off out of the gate and did very well in each of the matches.

The team had the high score of the day and ended up being the team with the highest number of points at the end of the qualifying rounds. They were second after the qualifying rounds overall.

It's a different kind of sporting event,said LaPeer. It's always more fun when you're doing well.

The theme of the competition was Steamworks, all designed around the use of steam for power. The robot had to be able to put balls into a container, to store the fuel and build up pressure. The number of balls it takes to achieve this pressure is based on the high or low efficiency goal of the team. It also needed to be able to get the rotors turning by placing gears on a peg. Once the gear train is complete, they turn the crank to start the rotor and get that turning.

At the end of the match, the robots needed to attach themselves to the team's airship by climbing the rope and signaling they are ready for takeoff.

Two of the robotics team members accompanied LaPeer to the school board meeting, Anna Beardsley, a junior, and Luke Passino, a senior, who is going on to Lake Superior State University to study robotics and electrical engineering.

The school board was shown several videos taken at the competition that had been posted online. After watching the videos, they were able to go into the hallway, where Passino was driving the robot around and Beardsley was explaining the different components of the machine they had built.

Each joystick drives one side of the robot, said Beardsley. The front wheels don't have any motors on them so it allows it to turn like it does.

The robot also has a camera mounted on the body, which is connected wirelessly to a computer. Although there is a little bit of a delay between the robot and the computer, the driver is still able to see what is happening and what the robot sees. This helped when putting the gears on the pillars and collecting the fuel at the competition.

Passino also demonstrated how the robot was able to climb the rope at the end of the competition, after they were able to get all of the rotors moving.

School Board Vice President Carolyn Sackett said it was really great to be able to see the robot up close and personal during the demonstration because at the competitions, you don't really get to have a feel for the size of the robot.

The robot used at the competition was completely built by the students in the robotics program at Inland Lakes. They were able to fabricate many of the parts used on the robot and were able to find out what worked and what didn't through trial and error, as well as following the many regulations placed on the machines.

Overall, the robot weighed 96 pounds and was one of the lightest robots in the competition.

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FIRST Robotics team puts on demonstration for school board - Cheboygan Daily Tribune