Alpha+ has great experience at Worlds
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| Bonners Ferry FIRST Team Alpha+ gathered under the St. Louis Gateway Arch. |
The BFHS Robotics had an amazing experience attending the FIRST Robotics World Championship held at the Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Missouri. Everywhere we went the theme was Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM).
It started with the plane ride from Spokane, where we met a teacher from the University of Idaho who was going to help judge. In Denver we met students from Australia who, after winning their regional competition in Hawaii, were flying to the St. Louis championships.
With a little extra time on Wednesday, we went to the iconic St. Louis Gateway Arch and took the gondola ride inside. The Mississippi River was at almost record flood stage and we were able to walk to the river’s edge.
The building almost directly opposite the center of the Gateway Arch is the U.S. Supreme Court building where the Dred Scott trial took place.
A mentor from Aviation High School, a specialty school in Seattle, drove a truck containing eleven Pacific Northwest teams' gear to St Louis. Several students from our team helped unload the truck and stage gear for entry to the Dome.
With more than four hundred teams unloading it was quite a scene.
Once inside, our “pit crew” Daniel Ortiz, Jordan Merz, and Andy Reed and mentors John Kaessinger and Carrick Remaley began robot inspection.
Inspection usually takes an hour and unfortunately we did not pass. We had an electrical short and for almost an hour, Jordan Merz methodically chased circuits to figure out the problem. It turned out to be our shooting motor winding, which meant disassembling a major part of the robot. The pit crew arrived at 7 a.m. the next morning and had the repair done for our one and only practice round at 9:30.
We won our first two games. With one hundred teams in our division, “Curie,” alone, there was plenty of time between games to take in the STEM circus held under the dome.
Many large manufactures had booths with all kinds of interesting displays. SPACE X had a rocket engine and a big screen movie of their recent soft landing. Lego had a life size Lego character made of Legos and all kinds of robots running around.
Then there was College Row, where universities tried to attract perspective students. Every college there had full ride and renewable scholarships available to qualifying FIRST members.
There was a football field-size room filled with a menagerie of teams from all over the world. The “pit,” where the robots are repaired, is decorated with the flavor of different countries, regions or themes. One could visit teams from everywhere and find out how their robotics programs and high schools run. There were water jetted anodized perfectly finished aluminum, carbon fiber, and C and C lathed plywood , four wheeled, six wheeled, and tank drive robots.
Qualification matches were randomly assigned- three alliance partners versus three opponents. Teams spent time between matches scouting opponent’s robots, pits and games to develop strategy for the upcoming match. In our third match our alliance scored 58 points in the pre-programmed 15 second autonomous match.
That was a higher total score than some games we played in the last two regionals.
Our opponents put in 75. It was clear we were at the World Championship.
Unbelievably we battled back to within two points, but lost that match.
A team from Lancaster, California, realized several years ago that many students were missing their prom and decided to organize one as a fundraiser. They rented the Hyatt Regency ballroom and in a few hours sold fifteen hundred tickets for the very popular RoboProm.
About half our team attended.
Our powerful fifty-foot shooter wore a groove in the tire that accelerated the Frisbee. It was a repair we could not do in the time allotted between matches. We still could shoot long, but we lost some accuracy.
In the last qualification match we were teamed up with one of the best teams at the competition. Their robot could pick up Frisbees from the floor quickly and shoot short. This was a perfect alliance partner, as they picked up our misses and shot them in. We won our last match. We managed to play all our matches and keep our machine running.
We finished fortieth at the Worlds!
Many people stepped up and helped fund our trip, making it possible for our team to proudly represent Bonners Ferry at the World Championship. We would like to thank them all for this amazing and unique opportunity. Its impact is hard to measure.
We would like to invite all our supporters and anyone else interested to our community demonstration this Friday, May 17, at the Middle School cafeteria 6:30 p.m.