By Jason Scheer
During the regional competition March 18-19 at Hofstra, teams built robots that lifted objects onto pedestals and dropped them. Though that simple task is a challenge even for the scientifically gifted, the competition was far more complicated.
Throughout the event, teams were coupled with other teams to form alliances. The alliances faced other alliances. When they squared off, they were attempting not only to fulfill their own tasks but also to prevent the competition from completing their own. The result was a lot of crushed metal and twisted gears.
After each match, teams had about 20 minutes to put their wrecked robots back together for the next match, creating a raucous and pressure-cooked atmosphere.
Eliza Lamin, a member of the Baldwin team, said that the intense and fun competition offers students something more than a traditional classroom atmosphere. "We learned everything from how to organize a team and make sure everybody has a task, to making sure everybody knows what needs to be done, to the actual building of the robot," she said. "You learn so much about yourself and how you work under pressure. It's something that you can't replace by sitting in a classroom and learning physics and other subjects. You have to experience it and feel it in order to know how good the end results can be."
Since FIRST held its kickoff ceremony on Jan. 9, Chaos Inc. had been working day and night to complete their robot. After two weeks of inner-Chaos quibbling, the team eventually adopted a design. Then came the drive train, the base and, eventually, a complex arm with a motorized pulley system.
Lamin said that with each completed phase came an enhanced sense of pride. "It was exciting, to say the least," she said. "Any time something new moved or something else worked, there was a lot of cheering going on."
Barbara Riess, chairwoman of the science department at Baldwin High School and one of the advisors of the robotics team, said that students would meet after school at 2:45 and work until as late as midnight. They also sacrificed Saturday mornings. "I always thought the students on the team were hard workers," Riess said. "But what amazed me was the continued dedication. Sometimes kids get a reputation these days of not having a very long attention span. These kids were building this robot for six weeks, and they had incredible energy from day one to day 42, and it never waned."
Riess lauded the design of the robot, which was 100 percent student-built. She wasn't the only one.
Chaos Inc. has been selected to speak at a conference in New Brunswick, N.J., later this year. Participating team members will offer advice and guidance to budding teams in the area. Team Chaos has become a model of success.
With the team's first competition behind them, the challenge now becomes sustaining that success. Riess said that junior-robotics programs would be instituted in the middle school in order to build an even better foundation. "We're very proud of the fact we have gone where no one has gone before and have taken [success] to another level," Riess said. "We're happy about that, and we hope we can continue to do that every year that we're in this program."
Lamin encourages others to join the team, which she says helped her gain a more dynamic perspective of engineering and science in general. "When you think of engineering, you think of people sitting at a desk drawing lines and making designs for buildings," she said. "But that's not what it's all about. It can be so much more interesting and more involved than just a simple job."
Riess hopes more students will get involved with robotics. Technology is becoming an increasingly prevalent part of daily life, she said, and students should embrace it. "This is the future," she said. "These kids are going to have robots in their house."
Comments about this story? JScheer@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 282.
