1504 in the News

[Beth Sweet]

Well, we got half of what we wanted. I sent in an article that I wrote and a picture, they used the picture and part of the article. I'll attach the picture that was in the Lansing State Journal as soon as I get access to a scanner, but until then, here's the article:

A basketball-playing robot seeded ninth and fifth in its two regional competitions with the help of its human counterparts, robotics team GEOmotion.

GEOmotion is a FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics team comprised of 12 Grand Ledge and Okemos High School students and seven mentors who include parents and Michigan State University students. The team is sponsored by NASA, the Dart Foundation, Touchstone Energy, Cawood Building Company and parental support.

The team competed at the Detroit Regional at Wayne State University, March 16-18 and at the Wisconsin Regional in Milwaukee, March 23-25. In Detroit, the team made it to the tournament quarterfinals and in Milwaukee, they pushed one step further and advanced to the semifinals.

“We did well because we were a simplistic robot and complimented the other teams very well,” said Grand Ledge High School junior Adam DiPietro.

The team’s mentors were equally as excited about the team’s performance.

“Seeing the robot that the kids put so much time into perform at such high caliber was phenomenal. You could see the excitement in the kids' eyes and you could tell that our jobs as mentors, to inspire the kids, had just happened,” says team mentor and MSU junior Pat Mullen.

The competitions in which the team participated were just the end of a season that began in January. On Jan. 7, the team attended a “kick-off” event where they learned that they had to create a robot to play a modified version of basketball.

The 2006 game was basketball; robot-style. Three red robots played against three blue robots in back-and-forth periods of offense. While on offense, each team tried to shoot and score as many three- and one-point baskets into the 10.5-foot-high goal as possible. At the end of the game, all of the robots could drive onto a ramp for bonus points.

Faced with this challenge and size and weight regulations, the team designed a 28 by 38 by 60 inch, 130-pound, robot using motors and gearboxes, a color-sensing camera and new software for the programming language C, all of which are used in real-life engineering applications.

“The motors and gearboxes that we used for the roller system were originally designed for use in Power Wheels, but we modified ours to produce more speed,” says Mullen.

An essential for any team trying to shoot was to use the CMUcam2 Vision System. This device is a high-tech, mini-camera that looks around and can “see” the colors blue, red and green. In the game, the camera aims the robot’s shooter by pointing it toward the green light.

Students controlled the robot by using joysticks. These joysticks had to be programmed to make the robot drive and shoot. This was the job of the team’s programmer, Okemos High School senior, Drew Sartorius. Using EasyC, a new piece of programming software, he programmed the joystick and the robot so that the joysticks made the robot move. EasyC is an easy to use program because instead of the typical combinations of letters, numbers and symbols, it uses pictures, similarly to a computer game.

“When I started using EasyC to program the controls, I didn't really need to use any prior knowledge of programming because it was just dragging in preset code,” said Sartorius.

During the six weeks that the team had to design and build its robot, they truly became a team.

“We all bonded like a tight family. It’s nice to work with people from another school, there’s a whole new group of people,” says DiPietro.

Parent-turned-mentor Mike Murphy says that being a parent on the team has had its highs and lows.

“I am excited about what FIRST is all about, and what it brings to the kids. I am frustrated at the lack of awareness of the program,” he says.

Though GEOmotion has finished their season this year, they are already creating plans for next year.

“Next year, we hope to have acquired not only more money through sponsors, but also more manual help. This should come through the addition of machinists and engineers, which we are severely lacking at this moment. With more professional help, hopefully the kids will gain more of an understanding of engineering; more than what a few business majors and a journalism major can bring to the table,” says Mullen.

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For more information on FIRST Robotics, please visit the organization’s website at www.usfirst.org/robotics or the team’s website www.msu.edu/~dangmytr/team1504