FTC

Learn from these guys: Dallas HS students hope to rank in this year’s robotics comp.

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Whether you’re going into mechanical engineering, computer science, design, greengineering or any other kind, a couple things are true: learning with hands-on experimentation is great, and it can be especially enlightening if you don’t have a plan; that’s called exploratory learning. But when it comes to doing—working on a final project, preparing for a competition, or just doing your job—you’ve got to have a plan.

The Dallas High School robotics team, called the CyberDrakes, learned that the hard way in last year’s FTC competition. The team had a last-minute design change which forced them to reprogram their robot. They finished the reprogramming on tournament day, and they wound up not placing or qualifying.

That’s not to say that had no plan last year, but it’s always best to expect the unexpected. And the CyberDrakes didn’t let this setback stop them from competing this year. And this year, they’ve got a plan and a schedule. Here’s the competition they’ve been planning for, from a local news article:

The 2012 FTC tournament “Bowled Over” has two teams forming an alliance to outscore their opponents. Teams were given competition rules and requirements and robot kits at the beginning of the year. They were set free to design a robot to accomplish specific tasks. This year those include collecting racquet balls, placing them in small plastic crates, and finally stacking the crates to score points — the higher, the better.
Polk County Itemizer-Observer

This competition in particular is for high school, but once you get into college there are competitions for any major, even conservation engineering. OSU is in the middle of the Campus Conservation Nationals, a competition where colleges around the country come up with plans to save as many resources as they can. These conservation plans are executed by the whole campus, but are probably designed by the sustainable engineering department.

So learn from these guys. When you’re working on a project or preparing for a final competition, make sure you’ve got a plan of action. Because a solid plan can survive a few unexpected difficulties.

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Getting the real drop on next year’s robotics/programming competitions with real grants.

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It might be a little late for this year, but if there’s one thing we want you to understand is just how cool Oregon’s robotics and programming competitions are. Like the upcoming OGPC 5.0, for example (which you can still register for!). There are some pretty spectacular opportunities out there for you, if you’ll just reach out and grab them. So get the drop on next year’s round of competitions by having your teacher apply for a grant, so your school can start its own team!

Sometimes it’s tough to get a team started, simply because the people who want to do it just don’t have the tools they feel the need. For a programming competition, that means laptops and textbooks. For robotics, that means LEGO NXT brains, books, and probably also laptops. And those things are not cheap!

If you email your teacher the links at the end of this post, or let them see the links some other way, there’s a good chance they will just go ahead and apply. As of today, there is still plenty of time–about 2 and a half weeks–to write a good application for next year. And a good application means a good chance of getting accepted, which means one important thing: money.

In an idealist’s world money would never be a problem, but the truth is that sometimes it is. Oregon has programs like these grants to help even things out, but you still have to earn your money by writing a good application and showing you’ll use the money well! We want you to succeed just as much as you want to, which means you’ve got to want it.

So send your teacher an email. Now.

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Handy grant stuff:

Cool programming competition stuff:

Oregon Robotics competition uses Kinect to play basketball

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Oregon has a pretty great robotics competition scene for anyone from elementary up through high school. We’ve got The FIRST LEGO League for middle school students, Junior FLL for kids 6-9, and the FIRST Tech Challenge for high school students—all managed by ORTOP. Thanks to ORTOP, Oregon students can get really great experience in robotics so, when college rolls around, they’re ready to become great engineers and computer scientists.

Last year, FRC's challenge was to put inner tubes on impossibly-high pegs. Click for the FRC photo album.

Read about this year’s FLL championship.

But Oregon has one other competition, still FIRST but not organized by ORTOP, called the FIRST Robitics Competition. And they also do some really great things. They make big, 120 pound robots which compete on a large field. Every year, the challenge changes (read about last year’s FRC regional championship).

And this year, as you may have guessed, they’re playing basketball.

But this isn’t basketball like you know it. That’s not cool enough for high school robot engineers and programmers. Nope. This basketball game has three hoops on each side—something like Quidditch with robots.

Oh, and students are going to be able to control their robots with gestures via Kinect–which we at GetReal think is awesome, since we love talking about the Kinect.

The first qualifying tournament is in two weeks, on Saturday the 28th, with similar events proceeding on following weekends. They all lead up to the Oregon championship on February 26th, which anyone can go to.

And we recommend you do, so you’ll see why you should enter your own team next year.

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Robot Tournament — The FTC State Championship

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Pit area

This is the pit area, while everyone was in the gym for the opening ceremony

One thing that seems to be a motif with some kids who wind up doing engineering is that they played with LEGOs when they were kids. Well, some keep playing with them as they get older. And there’s a natural progression to it. Once you get into high school, for example, why use plastic bricks when you can build with metal?

Some people feel that way too. And that’s why this last Sunday, at South Meadows Middle School, in Hillsboro Oregon, the First Tech Challenge had the Oregon state championship.

The FTC state championship was held in the gym of South Meadows, with the cafeteria immediately next to the gym used as a pit area. In the pit area, with each of the 24 teams set up to repair/update their robot to better-suit the competition.

At 11:45 there was a nice opening ceremony, and the gym was packed. Team members waved flags around, sported dyed hair, and a couple had mascots: I spotted someone dressed as daft punk, and one in a tiger costume. All of them had team t-shirts, with several interesting designs.

Immediately after that, the championship was underway. Only one team could win the championship, but teams were randomly assigned, so everyone had to work together at times to help themselves. And they had to work together. Some of the biggest points could be won from both robots balancing on a see-saw at the end of a round, along with a third, uncontrolled object. Place a basketball on a see-saw, then get on. Then get a friend of yours to get on the other side. Now walk back and forth until the see-saw is balanced. Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

There were two arenas. While one was conducting a round, the other would be setting up.

On top of that, the folks on your allied team also get those big points, which would mean you’re also helping your competition. Devious! But everyone was very cavalier and friendly, which in the end is pretty cool.

The whole point behind this tournament wasn’t necessarily to win. That’s not entirely true, because the prize is pretty big ($27,000 for FTC, in the form of a scholarship), but there’s kind of an underlying point: every single one of these teams did outreach programs. For example: my friends Untitled-8 have done a lot of programs, but their coolest one is a HALO: Reach tournament. (You can read more about that in this post.) Every team had things like this going, too. It was really inspiring to see.

The state championship was a pretty exciting event, full of a lot of energized people. And some of the teams were brand new. This seems like something which isn’t too difficult to get in to. Sign up for next year!

Home-made robot soccer

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On the 23rd, OMSI held the Oregon Science and Engineering Festival, where ORTOP had various exhibits to demonstrate what the Oregon Robotics Tournament and Outreach Program is all about. There was a specific emphasis on the First Tech Challenge, the high school program.


This song was playing in the background
when I first walked in.
Action-shot of last year's FTC robots, playing soccer.

Despite some technical difficulties early on, things got pretty intense.

Upon entering, you could see various FTC tables, where individual teams were working on their robot designs for this year, or giving information to visitors. There was a demo arena as well; FTC has a few stock robots to teach newcomers the basics, before they go to design their own robot. These stock robots were controlled with gamepads, with the goal of transporting items in the arena to goal boxes.

Walking into the auditorium, a much larger arena was set up. This is where a few teams were scrimmaging, using their FIRST Robotics Competition robots from the previous year (this year’s teams are not yet in the build season). They played on 2 v 2 teams, and the winner was whoever passed more soccer balls through their team’s goalboxes.

The beginning of each round had a short autonomous portion. According to one student, “it’s the programmer’s time to shine.” And I did see a few points scored at this time.

Blue Alliance's team members

Red and Blue alliances each had two FTC teams. They had a pretty impressive setup.

After that, the robots were controlled with some joysticks, from outside the arena. This is where most of the points were scored.

You can’t just look, though. I eventually got the chance to talk to a few teams, to see what they were all about.

Play for a cause. Play HALO for Science.

One team I encountered was Untitled-8, from Lakeridge high school. Nathan, Andrew, James, Sean, Ben and Aaron are all Freshmen this year, but they’ve been around for a while. Except for James, who is putting in his first year, the team has been active for as many as six years. They were all very enthusiastic to be a part of this, too.

Untitled-8 members.

They're an average-sized team, but they get a lot done

Besides competing in FTC, members of Untitled-8 also do OGPC under the team name SAVE–and won 1st place in the middle-school bracket last year.

By the way: The second O in ORTOP stands for Outreach. And that principle is seen throughout. Untitled-8 is raising money to get a science lab built for River Grove Elementary, and is doing that in a pretty great way.

They’re hosting a HALO: Reach tournament. Right now, entry is expected to be $5. And they’re in the process of looking for sponsors to supply prizes. I’m going to get in touch with the team again so I can find more information about this.

Apple cannon!

Another team I talked to referred to themselves pretty simply as Team 1540. They’re from Catlin Gabel.

Some of the members of team 1540.

On their website I learned their name is "The Flaming Chickens."

This team is pretty big: 25 members. I talked to Tyler, Gene, Tucker and Michael, all of whom were well-spoken and well-informed. The team has been around since 2005, according to their site, and has a pretty impressive list of awards. Last year, they won the Regional Championship, and also won the Chairman’s Award.

Their outreach programs are pretty cool, too. They’ve done work at the Oregon Zoo, fixing a hay baler–and one student mentioned something else. From their outreach section: “We’ll use our robotics skills to benefit the community by building a robot that will shoot apples and fruit for the entertainment of the herd of seven elephants.” Beyond that, they’ve got a long list of other outreach programs they’re a part of.

These are two great examples of the kind of people found at OMSI for this festival. The festival itself was filled with a pretty wide age-group, from little kids to one group of grandparents I spotted. Everyone shared a common interest in robotics, at least on some level.

January is the first really busy month for FTC folks, according to the schedule in the middle of the page. Expect to hear more on it later.