By Scott P. Moore
Standard Staff Reporter
Hewlett senior Chelsea Sidrane makes adjustments to Team Innovo’s robot during the scrimmage on Sunday. Photo by Scott P. Moore.
Controllers in hand, the group of students at Hewlett High School looked like many other gamers their age – except for the fact their controllers were moving actual robots in a competition rather than a video game. The Hewlett Robotics Club, home of FIRST Tech Challenge Team 3540 “Roboboogie” and Team 5477 “Innovo,” hosted their second annual local area robotics scrimmage on Sudnay afternoon in an effort to ready the Long Island teams for upcoming major competitions.
“Events like this are important, not only for the school, but all the teams in the FIRST Tech Challenge and the community,” said senior Jason Brooks, President of the Hewlett Robotics Club. “It allows teams an opportunity to practice on a real field… This gives them the chance to practice their strategy and their autonomous programing.”
“These scrimmages and workshop events are scheduled… to prepare these teams for the regional championship,” said FIRST Tech Challenge’s Affiliate Partner for New York City Len Rerek, who helped run the computerized scoring equipment. “They have a chance to perfect their designs and interact… The idea is to allow these kids to have a good experience and know what they’re doing when they get to the regional.”
Upwards of 18 teams, including Hewlett’s two representatives, came and participated in the event, which included talks on strategy, game play and positive interaction between students that would not normally have a chance to speak or trade ideas.
“Last year’s event was much smaller with three teams,” said Brooks. “Even though it’s difficult to plan and coordinate such a big event, with the help our coaches and students, we were able to get this all set up.”
“I think this is a great venue,” said . “Especially when you have the time and space to get 18 teams in here doing this stuff. The teams that practice together will do better. There’s no substitute for the experience of having those four robots on the field together.”
FIRST Tech Challenege’s game for the 2011-2012 season is called “Bowled Over!” The robots are designed to accumulate points during their matchup in various ways, including moving bowling balls across a walled arena to certain points and being able to carry small baskets filled with rubber balls back to their home bases. Accomplishing these and other tasks allow each team to score more points; the team with the most combined points at the end of the matchup win and, during competitions, move on to the next round of play.
Roboboogie’s robot ended up handling much of the duty on the field of play throughout the 20 to 25 or so scrimmages, many times winning. Brooks said the experience showed their design was working, but they would tweak their strategy.
“It was our first opportunity to test out our robot, so it was a good test for us to see how our robot would work,” he said. “But it was even better to see have other teams out there to see what they’re doing as well.”
While the students on Team Roboboogie used the scrimmage to tune up their robot for upcoming competitions, the event also served as Team Innovo’s official debut against open competition. Innovo is Hewlett’s second team spawned from the Robotics Club after nearly 30 students signed up to join the club this year.
“We had some technical issues at first when we put the robot out there,” said senior Innovo member Chelsea Sidrane. “It was frustrating at first, but we ended up with the high score for the day so we feel confident.”
“We’re going to make this robot work,” added senior Tyler Bershad.
Both Hewlett teams will compete in the Hudson River FIRST Tech Challenge Championship Tournament at Pace University in Pleasantville, New York on January 29th. The two teams will then also compete later in the year at the Javits Convention Center in the New York City FIRST Tech Challenge Championship Tournament on March 17th.