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Shooting a basketball through a hoop isn’t as simple as it sounds, and the task is even more difficult if you make a robot do it.
But Central Union High School senior and Searing Engineering team member Israel Rodriguez, 17, is “positive” their robot will do its job at the First Robotics Regional Competition in New York next month.
“I started with skepticism, but now I’m just excited,” he said.
The team is shipping the robot to the competition today, one day after the machine was tested at the back of the Lowe’s home and garden center in El Centro.
The robot, roughly the size of a vacuum cleaner, uses conveyor systems to pick up basketballs and pressurized air to propel them, said Jorge Rodiles, 17, a team member and senior at Central.
But the challenge isn’t only catapulting the basketballs, said Rodiles, who then explained that for the competition, the invention has to go across a moving bridge before picking up a ball and shoot it.
Whether the robot can cross a moving bridge remains to be seen.
That’s because this team of 16 teenagers only had six weeks to design, build, program and ship the robot to New York, said J.P. Garcia, team mentor and teacher at Central.
Most, if not all of the six weeks, was spent finishing the machine, Garcia said, leaving little time to actually “drive it.”
Monday’s practice was one of the few times the team will see its invention running before the competition.
This is not the case for well-funded robotics teams in other schools, according to Stephen Fairbanks, team mentor and mechanical engineer.
Many schools get sponsored by companies like Intel, have numerous mentors and have the funding to build two robots, ship one and practice with the remaining one, he said.
“But we are a little school and those kinds of funds aren’t available,” Fairbanks said.
Under these terms, competition does become unequal, he said, “but still the kids have a lot of fun.”
Team captain and CUHS senior Alex Martinez, 17, is aware of other teams’ financial advantage.
And while he said this saddens him, “We can stand against them with the right invention,” Martinez said.
“Long nights pay off,” he said, and this time the team had time to finish and practice.
And the robot “is doing everything it was designed to do,” Garcia said with a grin.
Meanwhile, Rodiles and CUHS sophomore Owen Makin, 15, practiced basketball shooting.
But Central Union High School senior and Searing Engineering team member Israel Rodriguez, 17, is “positive” their robot will do its job at the First Robotics Regional Competition in New York next month.
“I started with skepticism, but now I’m just excited,” he said.
The team is shipping the robot to the competition today, one day after the machine was tested at the back of the Lowe’s home and garden center in El Centro.
The robot, roughly the size of a vacuum cleaner, uses conveyor systems to pick up basketballs and pressurized air to propel them, said Jorge Rodiles, 17, a team member and senior at Central.
But the challenge isn’t only catapulting the basketballs, said Rodiles, who then explained that for the competition, the invention has to go across a moving bridge before picking up a ball and shoot it.
Whether the robot can cross a moving bridge remains to be seen.
That’s because this team of 16 teenagers only had six weeks to design, build, program and ship the robot to New York, said J.P. Garcia, team mentor and teacher at Central.
Most, if not all of the six weeks, was spent finishing the machine, Garcia said, leaving little time to actually “drive it.”
Monday’s practice was one of the few times the team will see its invention running before the competition.
This is not the case for well-funded robotics teams in other schools, according to Stephen Fairbanks, team mentor and mechanical engineer.
Many schools get sponsored by companies like Intel, have numerous mentors and have the funding to build two robots, ship one and practice with the remaining one, he said.
“But we are a little school and those kinds of funds aren’t available,” Fairbanks said.
Under these terms, competition does become unequal, he said, “but still the kids have a lot of fun.”
Team captain and CUHS senior Alex Martinez, 17, is aware of other teams’ financial advantage.
And while he said this saddens him, “We can stand against them with the right invention,” Martinez said.
“Long nights pay off,” he said, and this time the team had time to finish and practice.
And the robot “is doing everything it was designed to do,” Garcia said with a grin.
Meanwhile, Rodiles and CUHS sophomore Owen Makin, 15, practiced basketball shooting.
