The Westlake High School vertical robotics competition team was not having a good day when it first started out at the Bell Helicopter contest on Saturday at West Ridge Middle School.
There were issues with the team’s drone in the first of three matches, and when the students went to the practice field to work out the problem, the drone crashed and broke.
They scrambled to fix the machine and went on to put up the highest single match score at the event, winning the tournament and advancing to the championship tournament in Dallas in December.
This is the first year Westlake has participated in the Bell competition, and the scenario was modeled after an earthquake rescue. During each match, the students had to operate a drone, four remotely controlled robotic balls and a four-wheel drive robot in concert to complete the tasks at hand in eight minutes. The students also gave a presentation as part of the competition, which factored into their overall score for the day.
Coach and engineering teacher Norman Morgan said he was impressed by how quickly the students rallied to fix a major problem with their equipment on the fly.
“They literally destroyed their drone, and then went to the pit and basically rebuilt it because they couldn’t have completed the other matches that they had without it,” he said. “They showed a lot of grit and problem solving, to go to work and communicate with each other to try to rebuild their drone and then in the end, turned out the high score of the day.”
Westlake senior Oliver Tschopp, who flew the drone during the competition matches, said that despite the stress, he really enjoyed the challenge of working to fix a problem under pressure.
“I enjoyed the opportunity to be presented with a problem and then all of a sudden me and my teammates, who are some of the smartest people I’ve met at my high school, all put our heads together and try to find the solution to the problem,” he said. “When things were going wrong and we had to troubleshoot stuff and figure things out on the fly, I really enjoyed that experience.”
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Senior Gabe Reidel said one of the most challenging aspects of the drone crash was keeping group morale up.
“Honestly the hardest part was having to recover the group spirit. When the drone fell out of the air and crashed onto the ground,” he said, “The room went silent.”
But he said it was all worth it for how it felt to see their scores at the end of the day.
“After the game ended it was a feeling of pure elation,” he said. “We went from the bottom to the top.”
Senior Ishiba Kumari said she was proud of her team for not giving up, even when things were looking down. She said this is her first year doing robotics and she likes learning how to work with the equipment and design the robots.
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In addition to winning the tournament round overall, the team also won best design and best presentation. The team’s next challenge will come during the championship round, where the nine best teams from previous competition dates face off on Dec. 4. Several students on the team said they want to win, and plan to work hard to make that happen.
“I really hope that over the next few weeks we can flush out our design because our design for the previous competition was a little bit less than final,” Tschopp said. “It was held together with zip ties and tape but that’s not the end goal.”
Senior Neel Jaspi said that the team is better prepared for the next round since the students who had never experienced a tournament before have one under their belts.
“I’m looking forward to seeing what other teams have to bring to the game,” he said. “I think we can learn a lot from the championship and what other teams do.”
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