Hewlett High School robotics teams win top Inspire Awards

RoboBoogie and Bionica, two Hewlett High School robotics teams, continued their winning ways on Feb. 1 at Locust Valley High School, forming an alliance at the FIRST Tech Challenge that earned them first- and second-place finishes for the Inspire Award.

The Inspire Award recognizes teams that act professionally, and as role models for other students, showcasing cohesion in programming, engineering and community outreach.

Daniel Birkenstock, a Hewlett High ELA and algebra teacher, who became the coach of the school’s four teams in December, said that the decision the members of Roboboogie and Bionica made to collaborate at last week’s event, unlike past competitions, was nice to see as an educator.

“Getting to see my students working in tandem across their teams, as opposed to going against each other, was incredible,” Birkenstock said.

More than 20 high school teams from across Nassau County took part, their robots tasked with launching softball-sized Wiffle balls at a goal. The balls could be loaded by a team member or picked up by the robot. Judges graded the robots’ ability to complete stages of the task based on their hardware and software.

The members of RoboBoogie, a co-ed team that finished 17th at a qualifying competition in December, knew they had to adjust their strategy to improve. Zarina Wadiwala, a senior co-captain, said that the upperclassmen wanted to teach younger students the finer points of robotics while, at the same time, trying to win. Wadiwala, 17, explained that half of the 20 members would be graduating this year.

“It was hard to balance that ambitious goal,” she said.

In the December competition, Wadiwala said, the team’s robot didn’t perform well during the “autonomous” period — when it had to rely solely on coding — because it couldn’t throw the ball with enough force to reach the goal. And there were mechanical issues as well: The robot’s flywheel, rotating at 6,000 revolutions per minute, had a tendency to vibrate, causing screws and other parts to loosen.

To prepare for last week’s event, team members reduced the flywheel’s RPMs, adjusted its coding and improved their time management.

“We had to set deadlines,” Wadiwala said of the process, “talk to our departments and allow the programmers ample time to be able to test the program to make sure it’s working perfectly.”

This time around, RoboBoogie finished first. Birkenstock was impressed with the team’s success, saying they “really went back to the drawing board.”

“They took a fresh look at their robot design and how they were approaching the competition,” he said. “They ended up coming with basically a completely new robot.”

While RoboBoogie wasted no time starting the competition season, Bionica took a wait-and-see approach. The all-girls team scheduled its first qualifier on Jan. 18 so team members would have more time to test their robot and ask other teams — including RoboBoogie — for advice. As a result, they delivered what Birkenstock described as a dominant performance.

Like RoboBoogie, Bionica also faced challenges. Many of the girls have after-school commitments to sports, music or theater. Birkenstock said that in some weeks, it felt like only half the team was there.

“They spent a lot of time on their own, having to meet and coordinate to get people up to speed,” he said.

Unlike RoboBoogie, which used a human player to pick up the balls for the robot, Bionica chose to use a vacuum intake. Members sought feedback from their mentor, Alex Kaplan — an engineer by profession — and another Hewlett High team, Innovo, which Bionica junior captain Aviv Paz called “crucial to the design process.”

“They helped us lay out our priorities for the design,” Paz said. “What our robot was during our first qualifier is not what it was originally.”

Despite the team members’ busy schedules, Paz, 16, said their planning was sound. She noted that her teammates held one another accountable and stepped up when others were away.

“We felt it was important to give people deliverables with certain deadlines so that they knew what their job is,” she said.

With both teams qualifying for the FIRST Tech Challenge Long Island Regional Championship, which Hewlett will host on March 1, Birkenstock said the stakes are high for his host teams.

“It’s an incredible opportunity for us,” he said.