Future engineers do battle with robots

MOUNTLAKE TERRACE

Someday, Mountlake Terrace juniors Brandon Crader and Derek Burkett could be designing airplanes, a bridge or a fuel-efficient car.

Crader and Burkett, the captains of the Mountlake Terrace Robotics Team, will lead their team’s robot into the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition March 27-28 at Key Arena.

Up to 6,000 people are expected to attend Friday’s first round and Saturday’s finals which includes 60 teams from around the state, Canada, and even a team from Pakistan.

The top alliance, which is comprised of three teams, advances to the world championships, April 16-18 at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

The Mountlake Terrace team, which was rookie of the year its first year and made it to Atlanta, finished second the last two years in the state competition.

“For me, it’s something I’ve grown to like,” said Crader, who is in his third year of participating in the program. “Also you’re doing something with friends that you have, so it’s even more fun. It’s rewarding because you learn a bunch of different things from it.”

When the team’s robot, “Chilly,” takes the floor at Key Arena Thursday, March 27, it will be the culmination of thousands of hours of work by the students who built and tested it.

FIRST, which started about 18 years ago to promote science and math to young people, creates a real world engineering experience that requires students to perform under pressure and under budget.

The parameters of the game were revealed to students on Jan. 3 this year. Then they received a kit that comes with some electronics, chains, a compressor and a little bit of wire.

The students have to buy the rest but cannot spend more than $400 per part or $3,500 total on the robot. The robot also cannot weigh more than 120 pounds. Mountlake Terrace’s robot is controlled by two joysticks via a wireless Ethernet connection.

The students hold a daily meeting after school in the machine shop and split into smaller groups to get the tasks completed.

“That’s the most fun part: building the robot from metal into what it actually is,” said student Robert Koenig.

Many students spent hundreds of hours working on the robot in the six-week window they are given to complete it. Crader led the team with 315 hours, which means he put in more than 50 hours per week.

The purpose of the game this year is to score points by picking up balls and putting them in a trailer that is hooked up to an opponent’s robot. The tough part is getting the robot’s hard plastic wheels to move smoothly on fiberglass-reinforced plastic flooring. The students start out with schematic drawings and go from there.

“Coming up with a robot in six weeks that can do this was very difficult,” Burkett said. “We’re a veteran team so we have all these previous ideas of what to do and how to drive on carpet, while the challenge this year was to drive on stuff that’s slick as ice. … It took us four weeks to get a base on our robot to get the drive train ready.” The students have to learn everything from computer programming to metal fabrication to project management to get the robot up and running.

“For me it’s a chance to develop skills that I wouldn’t learn at school itself or even at a job,” Burkett said. “Here at robotics, I can learn teamwork and how to deal with people and when people get stressed out, learn to deal with that.”

Burkett, the team’s safety captain, has helped the team claim the top safety award at the state competition for three years in a row and he hopes to do it again this year.

The 25 students on the team also have to raise funds to pay the $25,000 to $30,000 it costs to run a full-year program. The team held a dinner and auction last fall which raised more than $9,000. The rest of the money was raised from companies in the area.

For example, one of the team’s 11 mentors, Jeff Stone, is from Boeing, and the plane manufacturer agreed to give $6,000 to each FIRST team that had a Boeing engineer on board.

Mentors are a huge part of the program.

The Mountlake Terrace team’s main mentor is Kevin Crader, Brandon’s father, who works a systems specialist at CH2M Hill in Bellevue. He gets support from his company to help and estimates that he spent more than 500 hours assisting the students during the building phase.

“It’s very rewarding to watch the kids grow and go into competition,” Crader said.

The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Washington also supports the FIRST program and donated more than $3,000 to each team this season.

The Mountlake Terrace team also works with the teams at Lynnwood and Shorewood high schools, providing mentor support and cash. Supporting other teams with knowledge and money is supported by FIRST, which encourages students to provide tech support for each other during competitions, said Mountlake Terrace technology teacher Craig DeVine, who serves as the team’s adviser.

Students at Shorewood are in their first year of robotics this spring and wanted to compete after going to a robotics event at Interlake High School last fall. But when Shorewood was ready to ship their robot to the competition organizers in February, it found it was 30 pounds too heavy. The Mountlake Terrace team supplied parts that were lighter but just as strong, and Shorewood swapped out the old ones out to make weight.

The FIRST program also provides $10 million in scholarships to students in the program who intend to go to a four-year school.

Taylor Nesheim, the captain of the Lynnwood team, coached by Brad Nelson, recently got accepted to Cal-Poly San Luis Obispo and plans to study computer engineering there. He applied for a FIRST scholarship and hopes to hear back from FIRST soon if he received one.