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In This Issue:
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FEATURE
STORY
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Amid the frenzy of cheerleaders, blasting loudspeakers, cheering fans and the energy that marks sports events, the robotics team of Morris High School took on challengers from as far away as England and as near as Stuvyesant High School. In the second FIRST Regional Championship match held at Columbia, the Morris High team, mentored by volunteers from the Mechanical Engineering Department, secured a place in the final round and finished as the third place winner in the competition, the highest ranking of any New York City school.
“This whole effort wouldn’t be possible without Columbia,” said Gary Israel, a Morris High science teacher and the team’s advisor. Israel, who approached the Engineering School last year for help for his team, describes his high school as being in the poorest Congressional district in the country. The enrollment is 1600 but the school graduates only about 100 students a year, he said. Six seniors are on the robotics team, and four are veterans from last year.
The competition is sponsored by FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a non-profit organization founded by Dean Kamen to engender as much excitement for science and technology as for sports. Every team is given the same kit of supplies, a 10-minute video, the rules, and six weeks to come up with a robot that can compete and win.
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The team went into the New York regionals after a sobering tryout at the NASA-sponsored Southeast Regional at Kennedy Space Center. “The team ranked 37th out of 48th,” said Bob Stark, Mechanical Engineering’s lab coordinator. “But I knew that they had a much better robot this year than last, even if the scoring didn’t reflect that.”
Their performance was not so much a result of the robot as the rules, he said. The rules are complicated, with the winner receiving three times the number of points of its opponent. The idea is not to overpower the other team, but to win by just one point. The competition at Columbia partnered two teams randomly against two other teams in a series of preliminary rounds to reach the quarter finals. Morris High’s strategy and good fortune resulted in its third place finish overall.
“The team was disappointed they didn’t win first or second,” said Jeff Malins ’03, one of the team mentors, “but by the end of our team dinner, they realized they really did well, even though they weren’t going to the nationals.”
After the first day of competition, the team got a morale boost as it received the Xerox Creativity Award. “I think it was the scissors jack basket that they liked,” said Jeff.
But that design was not the original one. The original robot had a ball handling mechanism that was so well designed it could suck up 10 balls in less than five seconds, but the robot weighed too much.
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Last year, the robot was made of wood so the 130 pound limit was never an issue; in fact, the team had to add ballast. This year, the robot was of welded aluminum, put together with the help of Mark Angelov ’98, who is now constructing sets for productions of the Metropolitan Opera.
“The ball handling mechanism was fragile and we couldn’t protect it, so we took it off and used the scissors jack,” said Jeff. Despite the last minute design change, the robot proved worthy of the creativeness award and held together to win third place.
With Bob Stark helping in the shop, Jeff Malins working on the electric circuitry, and Mark Angelov doing the welding, the team had exemplary mentors.
“These kids are very bright,” said Jeff, “and by the end of the six weeks, they were really comfortable with the robot and knew how to repair it when things went wrong. They were far ahead of some of those teams from the ‘magnet schools’ who had seven adults working on their robot and there wasn’t a kid in sight.”
The experience is one that Jeff hopes to repeat. “I have a lot of ideas for the competition next year,” he said, “and I know that the returning team members will too.”
