The 4-H Ocosta Wild Robotocats team will kick off its 2016-17 competition season this Saturday, when they will learn what challenges they will face in this season’s FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC), involving building robots to compete against other teams across the nation and internationally. Students have the opportunity to win millions of dollars worth of scholarships through this competition program that combines sport with technology.
FIRST – an acronym for ‘For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology’ – was founded in 1989 by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, an electric, two-wheeled ‘human transporter.’ Kamen, still active in the organization, established FIRST competitions more than 20 years ago to get students interested in science, technology and engineering and to foster a cultural shift in K-12 education.
Formed in the fall of 2010, for the past six years, the 4-H Ocosta Wild Robotocats team has competed in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) at regional, district and international levels with increasingly positive degrees of success.
The competition
Students on the 4-H Ocosta Wild Robotocats team have competed in a different FIRST Robotics Competition each year that combined sport with science and technology. Teams consisting of students and adult mentors compete under strict rules, limited resources and extreme time constraints.
Each year presents a different challenge and requires a new robot design. Teams have six weeks to design, build, test, and practice with their robot before competing against an international field of competitors.
Throughout the year, team members are challenged to raise funds, market their brand, hone teamwork and design skills, and then design, build, and program their robot to compete in the game.
Through the years, the team’s robots have shot basketballs, retrieved and recycled various items into target containers, climbed fortress walls and a whole lot more.
Teams compete at district levels first, and if ranked high enough at those competitions, move on to the District Championship level, which encompasses a much larger geographic area. Those ranking high enough at District Championships are then eligible to compete at the World Competition held annually since 2011 in St. Louis, Missouri.
Team record
In their first three seasons – 2011, 2012 and 2013 – the Robotocats participated in the Regional Model, where those ranked highest in a single regional competition advanced directly to the World Championship. Those years the team did not qualify to move on, but consistently improved their rankings among competitors.
In 2014, the Robocats started competing in the District Model, which offers two district competitions, followed by District championships and then Worlds.
In 2015, the Robotocats went all the way to Worlds — making it through Districts, District Championship and on to participate in Worlds. When the dust had settled, they placed in a highly respectable middle-of-the-pack among more than 100 teams competing from every state in the U.S. and several foreign countries, representing the top 4% of the 2,900 FRC teams worldwide.
Last season, the Robotocats made it to the regional event in Portland.
Financing hurdles
Financing the builds and costs to travel great distances to compete means that the team needs to raise large sums of money each season in order to participate. No easy feat for a small club from a small and extremely economically distressed community. Easily among the financial-support underdogs, the Robotocats are competing against literally thousands of urban teams that receive strong corporate support from financial giants across the country and internationally.
The team started their first year with a $10,000 grant from JC Penney and camped out during competitions in generously donated floor space in churches and community centers while feasting on many more sack lunches and dinners that hot meals.
In 2012-13, combining donations, grants, sponsorships, fundraisers and parental support, they raised approximately $30,000.
Costs went up dramatically for the District Model years, due to a minimum of two overnight trips for Districts, plus extra trips for District Championships. In 2014, the club raised $38,500.
With their trip to St. Louis for the World Championship included in 2015 costs, the team expended approximately $48,000. This past season, fundraising was tough, with the club managing to raise approximately $20,000 to support the program.
Cutting costs
In an attempt to actively involve more junior high-age students and to create a more manageable financing package for the program, this year the 4-H Ocosta Wild Robotocats team is heading in a different direction, choosing to participate in the FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC).
They have formed two squads of six members that will build a robot about the size of a microwave oven. Those bots compete in a floor game in an alliance format, just like the larger robots do. These FTC competitions still require all the same organizational and build skills, operational finesse and control as the bigger bots.
One squad is calling itself the FBI (Fishy Business Incorporated) and the other is known as the CIA (Coastal Intelligence Agency).
The biggest advantage of the move to FTC is that this competition is much more cost effective. FTC teams play against other squads that live much closer to each other, allowing teams to get to, compete and return home in the same day for the majority of their outings, saving major expenditures for travel, meals and lodging. While still requiring expensive parts, the scale of the bots is much smaller, reducing overall costs.
Team mentors estimate that each squad’s build, travel, lodging and meals will run about $3,000 this season, not including anticipated additional travel, meals and overnight stay expenses if one or both squads qualify for state, Super-Regional and/or Worlds.
Season schedule
The regular FTC season consists of two nearby league competitions and one interleague competition starting in November and going through January. The interleague competition will be between all teams from two leagues.
The state competition in Kent will be held in late January or early February. If the team does well there, it will move on to the West Super-Regional competition in Tacoma in March. That contest will include the top teams from the 12 western U.S. states.
A high enough ranking in Tacoma would qualify the Robotocats to compete in the World championship in Houston, Texas, in April.
Students and adults needed
4-H Ocosta Wild Robotocats welcomes every student, with or without special skills. All skill levels are welcomed and needed, technical and non-technical. All Grays Harbor area students in grades 7-12 are welcome to join the team.
Adult help is always needed and welcomed, as well, in the form of technical support mentors and other adult support for the 4-H Ocosta Wild Robotocats. You don’t have to be a techie to be a valuable part of the team. Bring any skills you may already have, like programming, electronics, metalworking, graphic design, web creation, public speaking, videography and many more.
More info
If you think you might be interested, contact Technical Mentor Steve Wood at 360- 268-7280 for more information.
BARB AUE | SOUTH BEACH BULLETIN
