Prior to the heat of competition, CV High School hosts an informal get together with local robotics teams.

By Bethany BROWN

Crescenta Valley High School’s FIRST– For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology – robotics competition team, Falkon Robotics (FRC 589), hosted its annual pre-competition season “scrimmage” for teams in the area to come together and socialize, share their robots and celebrate their accomplishments in a low stress environment prior to the heat of competition at a regional tournament.

On Saturday, Feb. 19, teams from Clark Magnet High School, La Cañada High School and Franklin High School in Eagle Rock joined the Falkons for the event, which was held outdoors on the CVHS campus to adhere to COVID-safe precautions. Masks and proof of vaccination or negative COVID test within the previous 24 hours were also required.

“It was an exhilarating event, to say the least. The opportunity to gather so many like-minded STEM students safely and in a celebratory fashion was the best,” said Lyn Repath-Martos, lead JPL mentor for the Falkon robotics team. “The event was exceptionally well-attended by the local teams, along with many parents who wanted an opportunity to see the physical realization of what has been occupying their children’s waking moments for these past several weeks.”

While entering competition season, teams are met with regulations such as time, budget and weight when building their robots. Repath-Martos said working against the limits of time and budget especially presents real world engineering and technology challenges that will ultimately help the students grow as a team, work on their leadership skills and learn how “real life” works.  

Each FRC team is given six weeks to understand a new game challenge, which is revealed the first weekend in January each year, and then design and build a robot that can weigh up to 120 pounds to accomplish several tasks. This year’s game challenge, Rapid React, involves picking up oversized tennis balls and scoring them in a high goal and low hub in the center of the field; at the end of the game, there is a structure that the robot can climb to earn additional points.

Teams are responsible for everything: designing the system, fabricating the robot, building the electrical and pneumatic systems, writing the code that makes the robot function, integrating a variety of moving parts, and testing the system to ensure that it functions.

“Robots compete on an alliance of three robots against another alliance of three robots,” Repath-Martos said. “They are randomly assigned throughout the competition so that in essence we end up playing alongside, and also against, all the other robots built by like-minded high school teams. So each team is trying to design a system that will allow them to both collaboratively play the game with our partners and defend against our opponents.”

Julie Townsend – JPL point of contact for the NASA Robotics Alliance Program – said NASA’s program provides funding to these “house” robotics teams so that students can rely upon that funding each year. Typically funds are dispersed to about 12 to 13 teams each year and each recipient team must have at least one JPL mentor regularly participating with it.

“The standard school curriculum doesn’t provide a lot of hands-on opportunity to experiment with STEM so having programs like FRC at our schools is so important to give kids an opportunity to discover what the world of engineering is about, develop strength in it and potentially consider it as a career path,” Townsend said. She emphasized that the reason the NASA Robotics Alliance Program exists is to inspire, through interaction with NASA engineers, future generations of engineers who will share the same passion.

“Our hope is for the kids to be inspired to come up with innovative ideas,” Townsend said. “Someday they could be at NASA developing the next Pathfinder or Mars helicopter, or the next incredible thing that we can’t even imagine we’d be doing right now.”

FRC students will continue to work hard and discuss critical strategy on how to play the upcoming Rapid React game as they approach their sixth and final week of preparation. The FIRST Robotics Competition is scheduled for March and April and will mark the CVHS Falkon robotics’ 22^nd year participating.