Robots shoot some hoops

Shawnee High School senior Nicole Puzio has been involved with the Iron Devils FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Team 1647 since the beginning of high school.

The Lenape Regional team, consisting of 65 high school student members from Shawnee High School and Seneca High School, placed 12th and qualified for the playoffs at the FIRST Robotics District Competition at Seneca High School the weekend of March 24 and 25, according to team advisor Chuck DiVincenzo.

Puzio designed and built robots for the team over the years and now hopes to become a mechanical engineering major in college.

The robots are built each year based on a different sport.

“It’s never the same thing,” she said. “It adds that variety.”

This year’s event, “Rebound Rumble,” was a basketball tournament.

“The FIRST Robotics Competition committee develops a new game each year for all the teams to play,” DiVincenzo said. “Each team has to design a different robot each year to meet a different aspect of the game.”

Preparing for the weekend was no easy affair, he said.

It took 20 hours to set-up the large gym for the tournament, the small gym for maintenance to the robots, the wrestling room, cafeteria, and five classrooms for judges, VIPs, and volunteers, he said.

DiVincenzo attended a robotics seminar in July, the team began preparing to compete in September, and the building process began in early January.

The team had six weeks to build the 120-pound robot.

This is the eighth season the team has participated.

About 2,000 people attended each day of the competition, he said.

Each game at the boisterous competition took two to three minutes to arrange and lasted two minutes and 15 seconds, he explained.

According to DiVincenzo, there are “15 seconds for autonomous (movement) where you program the actions of the robot, the last two minutes the robots are manipulated by the students.”

The game’s rules were a little different than a usual game of basketball.

“There are four baskets at each end of the field,” he explained. “There are different point totals for each, three for highest basket, two for the medium basket, and one point for the lower basket.”

“The bridge is located in the middle of the field and teams try to balance for 10 points each at the end of the match.”

The Iron Devils’ robot was able to shoot baskets through a conveyer belt similar to a pitching machine. The team placed the ball on the conveyer, and when it hit the flywheel, the ball would launch.

“We have a tracking system on the robot,” he said.

Seneca senior Yifan Shen helped with the programming aspect of the process as the electrical sub-team head.

He helped with wiring, soldering joints, debugging and other support to make it function.

“We got really, really busy,” during the six weeks of assembling time, he said.

Shen said the competition went well, and he was proud, thankful and grateful to be able to participate in the team.

He hopes to become an electrical engineering major in college.

The Lenape/Cherokee Storm Robotics team also participated in the competition.

Team adviser Nathan Knauss said in an email, “The team placed 15th in the field of 28 teams with a seven win, four loss and one tie record.”

“We were the fifth overall pick in the elimination rounds by Rancocas Valley Regional High School, but were eliminated in the quarterfinal playoffs,” he added.

According to DiVincenzo, “There are 12 qualifying rounds, and then the alliance selection allows team to choose two other teams to play with them during the elimination matches.”

“Twenty-four teams total match up for the quarter-final, semi-final and final matches.”

The Storm Robotics team won the Entrepreneurship Award.

“This is a judged award given to one of the teams who best demonstrates a good business plan and organizational structure,” said Knauss.

He believes that basketball was chosen as the competitive sport this year due to its ability to understand and enjoy by the public.

According to Knauss, there was a sense of camaraderie throughout the competition.

“The robots need to be built to perform without much maintenance,” he said. “When things break, the teams all have opportunities to repair their robots in the pits before their next match.”

“A lot of teams also assist each other if anything goes wrong,” he added. “Helping others is strongly encouraged in this competition and is called ‘Gracious Professionalism.’”

On March 29, Carol L. Birnbohm, Assistant Superintendent of the Lenape Regional School District, released a statement about the event:

“We were extremely proud to host the FIRST Mid Atlantic Region competition. My job as a school administrator is to ensure our students are prepared for a world beyond high school and the robotics program helps accomplish this task.”

“The students enter the program with varied levels of expertise in marketing, science, engineering, math and science and learn that in order to succeed they need to rely on one another. They worked collaboratively and overcame difficult obstacles to design and create their robot.”

“The event was a spectacular display of community, parent and corporate support represented by the vast number of volunteers who helped make the weekend run smoothly.”

“This was my first time attending a FIRST competition and what surprised me the most was how the teams supported one another with cheers, chants and pageantry, challenging the level of enthusiasm found at most sporting events.”

Puzio said with a laugh she thought the event “went better than anyone thought it would.”

Learn more about the FIRST organization at www.usfirst.org, the Iron Devils at irondevils.lrhsd.org, and Storm Robotics at stormrobots.org.