Metro teens put robot to test

[Brandon Martus]

http://www.detnews.com/2004/nnwarren.../n10-78870.htm

Metro teens put robot to test

Team to compete at Great Lakes, Midwest regionals

Wednesday, March 3, 2004

By Tim Keenan / Special to The Detroit News

STERLING HEIGHTS — When Michael Jordan was in his prime, people called him a basketball machine. Now, area high school students are working on building their own basketball machine.

Thirty-one high school students from the four Utica Community School District high schools as well as students from Lakeview, Romeo, Armada, Sterling Heights and Ferndale are preparing for the Great Lakes FIRST Robotics regional three-day competition that starts next week at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. The team also will be participating in the Midwest Regional at Northwestern University in Chicago March 26-27.

FIRST, which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, is the brainchild of New Hampshire-based inventor/engineer Dean Kaman, who decided some 14 years ago that smart students should have the same opportunity to showcase their talents in front of an audience as athletic students.

The Utica team, sponsored by Ford Motor Co., FANUC Robotics and B&K Corp. and supervised by Paul Copioli of FANUC, is in its sixth year of competition, and team members expect to do well in the coming events.

“I believe we have a very good winning chance,” said Kevin Penn, 18, a senior at Romeo High School and a three-year robotics competition veteran. “Our drive train is just amazing. It’s almost built like a tank.”

Ross Putvin, 17, a junior at Eisenhower High School, said, “We’ve got a good team, a good design, good strategy, and I don’t think we can lose.”

Seventeen-year-old Sarah Phornbro, a senior at Sterling Heights High School, brimmed with optimism. “We have a fantastic robot,” she said.

Competing teams had from Jan. 10 to Feb. 26 to build, program and test their robots, build the shipping case, build a replica of the playing field for practice and design a marketing campaign to attract partners during the competition.

The object of the competition is to score as many points as possible in two minutes with their robots on a 48-by-24-foot playing field. First, the robot — controlled remotely by a team member — must trip an infrared beam to release a number of balls onto the field. Then the robot has to deliver the balls to student team members who shoot the balls in a bin.

When that mission is accomplished, the robot has to put a ball in the bin itself and then grab a 10-foot pole and lift itself off the ground.

But there’s more to the FIRST Robotics program than building robots and putting them in competition.

“Learning the mechanical aspect is interesting, but the mentors and the (professional) engineers also take the time to show you how to use a certain tool and explain how something functions,” Penn said.

“It’s enlightening,” Putvin said. “There’s a lot of satisfaction in the team unity and the fun we have.”

The Utica team will be one of 62 teams participating in the Great Lakes Regional at EMU.

Also competing from the immediate area include the Fitzgerald & Denby & A. Philip Randolph team sponsored by DaimlerChrysler’s Warren Stamping facility; the GENESIS ‘02 Warren Consolidated Schools team sponsored by General Motors’ General Assembly and Engineering; and the Center Line High School team sponsored by the U.S. Army TARDEC.



Tim Keenan is a Metro Detroit free-lance writer.

[MrToast]

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