Up mountainous ramps and over metal rods, a robot rolled onto the plane and collected points for its human companions. Through its strong efforts, the TCHS Robotics Team Ramroids took home the LA First Tech Challenge Palm Desert Qualifier Winning Alliance award on Jan. 9.
The team has been developing the robot since September during club and after school meetings. Members were divided into subteams such as the scouts, who basically advertised the robot’s capabilities, interview team, which contributed to judging, and pit team, which fixed the robot or changed parts.
Junior William Xu is co-captain and driving coach of the team.
“During the first four qualifying rounds, our tank treads kept breaking, which caused the robot to break down,” Xu said. “But once we got the problems figured out in the fifth round, everything went according to plan with dumping debris into the buckets with the robot.”
In the arena, one of the ways in which teams could win points was through picking up debris and sending it up the mountain. With its shovel, the Ramroids’ robot efficiently lifted debris onto its inner conveyer belt and into the buckets, which allowed the team to proceed to the next stage. When it came down to creating an alliance, the team collaborated with Heritage High School’s team in order to outlast the last few contestants.
Every year, before members can compete, their robot must follow the assigned theme and a set of regulations, such as fitting an 18 by 18 by 18 frame and containing no liquids, loose wires, or raw materials. Alongside the robot’s adjustments, the team compiled an engineering notebook, which detailed the machine’s progress and inner mechanics.
“Since there were a lot of communication errors with our electronics, it cost us matches where we could have won,” Senior Ryan Chu said. “I think if we did more testing, we could have prevented the issues that had happened.”
Though the team brought home a trophy, it has yet to qualify for the regionals coming up on Feb. 27 in Monrovia. There were categories involved in the First Tech Challenge that Ramroids left unfulfilled, which they are now amending through practice and teamwork for the approaching qualifying competition on Jan. 24 in Hemet.
“During the challenge, the team did really well when the pressure was on,” Computer Science teacher Mr. Tim Harrison said. “The members had developed a good team mentality and it will carry them into the next competition.”
TCHS School Newspaper