Gearing Up

Sion’s robotics team gained traction this year as they move past the restrictions that came with COVID and prepare to compete in the qualifier competitions.

BY ELLA ALEXANDER COPY EDITOR

Sion’s robotics team has progressed over the years and ranks seventh in their league. Their season began in early August, when their competition league, ‘FIRST Robotics,’ released a video detailing the challenges each robot must complete in order to earn points. Each year, there is a different game; this year, the game board, which is 45” by 95”, is filled with tall rods of various heights. In order to score points, the robot must place a cone on top of each rod.

First the team watches the video and builds the game board in their own space. Next, they plan what they want their robot to look like, strategize on how to earn the most points and then start building.

“Building is definitely continuous; things fall apart, you put it back together, you decide to change something so you have to rebuild it,” sophomore Ella Satterwhite said. “Ideally it would all happen in the beginning of the season, however that’s not reality.”

Once the robot is put together, the next step is to start programming. The robot is programmed for the autonomous period, a 30 second period during a match in which the team is not allowed to touch or control the robot.

“Sometimes autonomous periods can go bad, I mean we’ve had robots flip over, robots stop working, or sometimes they will stop in a really awkward place,” Satterwhite said. “If the other robots run into them, there’s all kinds of things that can happen. It’s very exciting.”

For the remaining two minutes of the match, the robot is hand-controlled by an Xbox controller. The controller is connected to a “driver’s station,” which is similar to an iPad. The station is connected to a receiving box on the robot allowing the Xbox controller to drive it.

“We never quite feel ready to drive the robot at competition, so it’s just kind of like we’ll do our best once we’re in it,” senior Lauren Millard said. “Driving is usually a little bit stressful but you’ve got your team. You can have up to two drivers at a competition. So far we’ve only had one, but hopefully we will have two at the next competition, one to work the wheels and the other to work the arm.”

In addition to the driver, each team is allowed a coach at the competition. The coach guides the drivers, gives them strategies during the game, makes sure that the driver is going to the right spot and helps them adjust when needed.

“The coach is basically the eyes and the strategist,” sophomore Becca Houlehan said. “Coaching at meets is so much fun. Although it may be stressful at times, it’s worth it.”

Teams can also earn points off the gameboard in their journals. The journal is a daily log that keeps track of what each team does, and they earn points for it by keeping it consistent and organized. The journal logs what the teams do each practice, keeps track of successes and failures and records the schedule for meets and competitions.

“I always had an interest in coding, and I wanted to expand on that,” freshman Salem Smith said. “But once I realized there was a notebook, I wanted to do that so I could help design it and keep track of events.”

The team has attended a total of three competitions and plans to attend the qualifier for state Feb. 11. Each competition consists of several matches. The rules for a match are as follows: each team gets paired up with another team and then together, they compete against another duo of teams. Each match lasts two and a half minutes, and all teams in a match operate on the same game board.

“You never know who you’re going to be paired up with,” Houlehan said. “We try to program for every scenario but it’s hard because you might be paired up with a team that can do everything or you might be paired up with a team that is struggling because they don’t know what they’re doing or their robot breaks.”

In their most recent competition, the team was paired up with the Cobalt Colts, a large team that is known for being successful in competition. However, during the match, the Colts’ robot broke, and Sion’s team won the match for both themselves and the Colts.

“There’s a fair amount of unknown that you’re going into,” said Houlehan. “The goal is to progam your robot the best you can and make the best use of the time you have cause you never know whats going to happen.”

Competitions are a great way to gain experience before a qualifier. They are used for networking and meeting new people. A benefit of meeting other teams is getting to see their strategies and implementing them into what your team already has.

“Actually our arm is one we saw another team using, “ Satterwhite said. “They were super friendly and sent us the link to buy it.”

The team was originally founded by former STEM teacher Marilyn Stewart in 2012. Stewart and Ron Cosner, a student’s father who worked as an engineer, ran the robotics club until 2015, when current coach Kathleen Teel took over. With only four returning members from the previous season, the team is in a rebuilding year.

“Our inexperience is something that we’ve struggled with, definitely just having to build our knowledge from the ground up,” Satterwhite said. “There’s been a lot of YouTube watching and a lot of putting something together realizing it doesn’t work and then you take the whole thing apart.”

Millard and Houlehan are the team’s captains, and are both returning members.

“The summer before last year, I did an intro to engineering camp at Missouri S&T,” Millard said. “We got to experience different engineering disciplines, and I really liked computer science. I joined robotics to try it out.”

Each year brings new obstacles, but with each new challenge comes the opportunity to overcome and grow stronger in the end.

“I enjoy seeing the girls figure out stuff on their own,” Teel said. “And this last year was all brand new people due to COVID. These guys have learned from scratch how to do everything, nobody to teach them, so it’s been exciting.”

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