ALBANY – A team of young but mighty brains from Albany High School is gearing up to take a souped-up robot they built to challenge other mechanical beings in a regional showdown.
The school’s engineering team is competing in the annual FIRST Robotics New York Tech Valley Regional Competition at the MVP Arena in downtown Albany between March 11 and 13.
Schools from all over the region are tasked with raising funds to build and program industrial-size robots to play a field game on three-robot teams.
Albany High won the competition in 2018 and is entering again with assistance from National Grid.
Jacob Ennis, a National Grid gas field operations supervisor, has volunteered and mentored the students for eight years and is helping guide them toward another potential victory alongside their faculty advisers.
This year’s challenge is scoring goals. The team’s robot will have to work with several others to deposit a ball into multiple goals both with a driver and on its own while adapting to new teammates through a series of rounds.
Ennis said what makes their robot unique is its new smart gear driving system and reliability. The yet-to-be-named robot has gone through several trial runs and has held its own. Ennis said the students have been working hard at devising their mechanical masterpiece since not being able to compete the last two years.
“I’m just happy to be part of it. It’s really been a joy for me to do this,” he emphasized.
Students Kevin Mcleod and Pyaesone Hmine said they were both nervous and excited about the competition. It’s been a couple of years since Albany High was able to enter the arena and is returning to the stage with “ambitious” plans, the two said.
In past years, the team concentrated on achieving the lower goals and accuracy tasks. This year, however, they added cameras to the robot that will allow it to turn, shoot the ball and adjust its velocity without any human control.
And with two years of engineering rookies on their hands, Dorothy Sperry and Sophia Lucarelli said mentorship has been a large part of the robotic triumph. Over a dozen students could be seen late Thursday cutting metal and piecing together parts in the high school’s workshop with older students assisting them through tasks.
Mentorship, according to Lucarelli and Sperry, is especially important to them as women in STEM. The two recall the team being mostly white guys when they first joined, which has generously changed in the last few years.
“We want to pass down to the next generation of kids coming into the team, so they know what they’re doing,” Lucarelli said. “It’s a good thing to show other girls that you can do this do and it’s super fun.”
Brent Cady, a 17-year faculty adviser to the team, said they were nervous because the two-year competition gap left only five competition veterans on the team and there was concern over a loss of building knowledge during that time.
Despite, the hiatus, he said the students “exceeded” expectations.
“I think we could see some success on the field,” he noted.
Credit: Source link
