When robots compete, high school teams are winners
As the crowd cheered wildly, six remote-controlled robots raced around a track at Boston University's Agganis Arena, like rickety shopping carriages battling in a cage match.
Zack Kendall and Tim Wood stood side by side and kept their eyes locked on Robot No. 2103. Kendall gripped a black steering wheel and Wood used two joysticks to guide Gloucester High School's homemade vehicle around the carpeted track.
Their robot ended up winning four of nine matches in the Boston FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Regional Robotics Competition last weekend, and the team took home an award for its efforts.
"We've come a long way in just two years," said Dick Leonard, a biology teacher who advises Gloucester's relatively new robotics team. "There's a lot of McGyver-ing going on here."
This marks the second year that Gloucester High has com peted in what has been described as the Super Bowl of science fairs. The robotics tournament possesses the spirit of a high school pep rally, with fans sporting dyed hair, face paint, pom-poms, and costumes.
More than 1,000 students participated in the regional competition at BU, which drew 51 high school robotics teams from Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island.
Each team was given a set of parts in January. The students then spent six weeks designing and building their machines, outfitting them with mechanical arms, claws, sensors, and cameras.
The robots are generally just under 5 feet tall with long, extendable arms used to capture a bouncy inflated ball.
The students competed in groups, with three teams to a side, in a game called Overdrive.
Each match lasts two minutes and 15 seconds, and robots score points by making counterclockwise laps around the track and moving the inflatable ball across a finish line.
A team racks up more points whenever its robot hoists a ball up and over the overpass structure that is suspended above the finish line, and whenever one knocks an opponent's ball down from the overpass.
Gloucester High used an assortment of materials and parts - including bike chains, a sledgehammer, a television remote control, and plenty of wires - to build its robot, which weighed in at about 111 pounds.
The team suffered a major setback at the beginning of the tournament when part of its robot's steering system failed.
"You know what they say, it's Murphy's Law: When something can go wrong, it will," said Michael Welin, a 17-year-old junior on the team.
The team quickly changed its steering strategy and, despite the malfunction, persevered through the competition. But, by the end of the qualifying rounds, Robot No. 2103 was in rough shape.
"Unfortunately, our whole scooping mechanism is a casualty," Leonard said. "It got bent. We also lost our video [camera]."
Gloucester didn't make the playoffs.
The first-place winners of the regional event, a three-team alliance from Tewksbury Memorial High School, Shenendehowa High School in Clifton Park, N.Y., and Trinity High in Manchester, N.H., will get to compete in the national FIRST championship, where they'll face teams from all over the world.
Six other teams from Massachusetts - Agawam, Bedford, Bridgewater, Clinton, Watertown, and Worcester - also qualified to advance to the championship, which will be held April 16 to 19 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.
Gloucester High never advanced past the qualifying round at the regional competition, but team members already are looking forward to their next event.
While standing in the pit area at the Agganis Arena, Leonard pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket: It was a flier for a robotics competition May 9 and 10 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Emily Sweeney can be reached at esweeney@globe.com.
