JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-FORT SAM HOUSTON, Texas –
Preparation and ingenuity helped three Cole High School students achieve a third-place showing at a state robotics contest held earlier this spring.
The Cole robotics team of Henry Yowell, Mitchell Hafer and Aydin Chewning, named “Plastic Gear,” finished third out of 58 schools competing in the advanced level at the Texas Computer Education Association, or TCEA, State Robotics Contest April 7 at Hutto High School, near Austin.
The Cole students totaled 263 points in taking the third-place trophy, the best showing ever for the school’s robotics program at a state meet. Cole started its robotics program in 2014.
“It was really exciting,” said Yowell, the robotics team captain. “I’m glad we got to bring home a trophy. Third place is pretty good.”
The state contest consisted of three rounds – each lasting two minutes - in which students from competing schools utilized a robot on a board surrounded by walls, representing the surface of Mars. The objective of the robot was to prepare the planet for human settlement by picking up objects, including Lego bricks and checkers, on the board that represent a certain part of the Martian surface.
Yowell and Hafer, who are both seniors, designed and built the robot used at the state competition, a Lego brand robotics platform rover equipped with four motors to move it and an arm and claw attached to it. Chewning, a freshman, served as team manager in helping with some programming tasks for the robot.
Hafer said the robotics project designed by the Cole students was more reliable than the robots put together from most of the schools at the state competition
“Our claw is a big one,” Hafer said. “It allows us to grip very well; it’s pretty precise. We also added these rails on the side. We had a very similar version (of the rails at the area contest in January) but we managed to basically perfect it at state to let us recalibrate our robot by running it into a wall and allowing the wheels to re-correct it, as opposed to having an additional sensor that would take more programming.”
Yowell said the people who attended and competed at the state contest were impressed by how the Cole robot performed.
“A lot of people liked our robot,” he said. “It’s mainly the claw picking up the checker pieces that wowed everyone. Even the judges were just amazed by it.”
Yowell was the team member who designed the claw in one class period, according to Gina Hanna, Cole robotics teacher and team sponsor.
Hafer said what helped the Cole team to its third place showing was the ability to make adjustments to their robot before and during the state competition.
“We technically did most of the work weeks leading to the competition,” he said. “It’s a lot of testing, making sure everything worked as planned and then having a contingency in case it didn’t. Of course, when we got there we had to adjust a bit.”
Making adjustments helped the Cole team find solutions to problems that came up during the contest, including when the robot had trouble picking up the last object on the board because it was either overshooting or undershooting it, and when the robot was taking too long to put its arms down to pick up the checkers, costing the team valuable time.
Chewning helped to solve the problem with the robot’s arms by reprogramming the robot to drop its arms down while moving, instead of having to wait for it to stop to do so. This allowed the robot to pick up the checkers efficiently and quicker.
The Cole team was in striking distance of first place at the state contest, ending up 14 points behind the winning school.
A bad bounce involving an object thrown by their robot may have cost the Cole team a chance to win the contest. That occurred when the robot picked up the block, representing an alien life form, and threw it on the adjoining board used by the opposing team as permitted by competition rules. However, the block bounced off the designated area it was supposed to land on, costing the Cole team an opportunity to gain additional points that could have moved them up.
Hanna said she was proud of what her students accomplished at the TCEA competition.
“They worked so hard and just made it all worth it, all the hard work,” Hanna said. “I was really happy for them. They had a lot of family members that came and watched. So, that was exciting and to be able to share that with their families was amazing.”
Hanna said the robotics team members had both the engineering aptitude and persistence to make their robot work.
“They were persistent in programming, testing, rebuilding, redesigning, fine-tuning and they just kept at it,” she said. “Because it’s not a very precise model, it’s a Lego, you have to be really patient. They have to be able to adjust and deal with the unexpected. They did really well.”
A second robotics team from Cole consisting of freshman David Parker and eighth graders Elizabeth Bardales and Camryn Kling, known as the “Cool Cougars,” finished in 13th place at the state contest. The “Cool Cougars” advanced to the state meet after finishing third in the area contest held in January. It was at that same area contest the team of Yowell, Hafer and Chewning also advanced to state by taking first.