Months of Preparation
While the end competition is very competitive and public, what many do not understand is that months and hours of planning, preparation and manufacturing go into each completed robot. Students develop teams that are mentored by a teacher and partnered with a local manufacturing company to guide them in the learning and robot manufacturing process.
One such team, Cambridge Springs High School’s Team PHEAR, who placed second in the overall competition and first in the Best Documentation portion of the competition, started their team meetings and planning sessions in May of 2008 and continued meeting roughly twice a month until this year’s competition in April. The team logged over 211 man hours on the project and averaged 44 hours per team member. Team PHEAR partnered with Tech Molded Plastics, a local custom injection molding company, to help design and manufacture their robot, Mars.
Mars, named after the Greek God of War, was a high speed ramming robot engineered to smash the opponent with brute force before the other teams can get their robots ready.
Matt Clayton, a junior on the PHEAR team stated, “There was a lot more math skills involved with the project than I would have thought. We had to calculate the density of the metal and figure that into the total weight and design.” Matt intends to go into engineering as a career field and enjoyed working with an engineer on the robot to get a better idea of what a typical day is like.
“Our robot was actually over the 15 pound limit by 0.2/ lb. We ended up having to mill off some of our spikes to bring the robot into spec,” said Tyler Gill, a freshman on the PHEAR team.
Team PHEAR analyzed the pro’s and cons of previous years’ robots, established a budget, delegated work, designed and manufactured a robot, rationalized/ purchased components and documented all efforts for judging. The team even completed an outreach project and spoke to the Cambridge Springs Elementary PTO to generate future interest in the RoboBOTS program for future students.
“RoboBOTS was an amazing experience. It has taught me additional math and leadership skills that I will be able to use in the future. I wish I would have gotten involved (with RoboBOTS) in the previous two years, “Josh Caldwell, a Senior on the PHEAR team.
“Working with the students was great.” Stated Don Jordan, Design Engineer at Tech molded Plastics. “The students were very well prepared and knew what they wanted to accomplish. Their excitement for the project was a reward in itself.”
If winners were measured in education gained, fun had and life lessons learned, all who participated in the RoboBOTS program are the “true” winners. |
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Tech Molded Plastics' Engineering Team meets with Team PHEAR for a RoboBOTS planning session.
Brandon Hough, Tech's Engineering Manager, survey's Team PHEAR's prototype.
The under carriage of the Mars robot (Above) and Top view (below).
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