University City Robolions Headed For World Robotics Competition

UNIVERSITY CITY, MO — Last weekend, University City High School's robotics team — the Robolions — won FIRST Robotics' Miami Valley Regional Tournament at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, taking home a prestigious blue banner.

On Tuesday night, the team was hard at work in their robotics lab, repairing their robot after it took damage in that competition, and getting ready for their next challenge. This weekend, they will compete in the St. Louis Regional at St. Louis University's Chafeitz Arena, and the team has already qualified for April's world championship in Houston, Texas, where they will face off against 1,400 teams from more than 60 countries.

Founded by Segway-inventor Dean Kamen in 1989, FIRST — an acronym which means "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology" — says its mission is to "inspire young people to be science and technology leaders and innovators by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs," and to "create a world where science and technology are celebrated."

Nowhere is that mission more apparent than in the Robolions' lab, where coach Ed Deitzler floats between groups of students — high-school aged electricians, welders and programmers — managing the apparent chaos with a smile on his face.

"On any given day, it may not look like not much is happening," he said. "But, two, three, six weeks later, you have a robot."

By day, Deitzler is a project manager for TreeHouse Foods, a private-label packaged-food company. Besides a background in information science, he said he didn't have any experience in robotics before signing on to mentor the team in 2013. It's been a learning experience for both him and the students.

"The team has allowed me to take the skills and knowledge that I have as a professional and share them with these students, to help guide them to think critically and solve problems, and to create an environment where they can take their ideas and turn them into reality," he said. "Within the guise of this game challenge, we have to think about how we're going to design the robot, our strategy, how we're going to prototype a part to see if it works — all in order to go from something that is bits and pieces of an idea to a final robot that can compete."

Deitzler believes too few young people are currently going into science and technology fields. "I can see that from my day job," he said. He wants to change that.

Senior Clayton Miller, the Robolions' captain, said being on the team has given him confidence, helped with his public speaking ability, and taught him to use tools that he believes everyone should know how to use: drills, lathes, bandsaws.

"Strategy is also important and communication in general," he said. "How can we analyze the game to get as many points as we can? What functions should our robot have? How big should it be?"

Those are all questions the team has to work together to answer.

The specific challenges of the robotics competition change every year. "Each year there's a different game," Clayton explained. "Some years they've done soccer or they've done basketball. This year is called "Power Up" and it's video-gamed themed, 8-bit themed. The goal is to create robots that can pick up 13-inch by 13-inch cubes and deliver them into scales and switches that balance back and forth, depending on the amount of weight on each side. And there's also a bar for the robot to climb up on, which also gives you points."

The 2.5 minute matches are three on three, and include a 15-second autonomous period where the robot must act on its own. After that, the teams control their robots using joysticks or video game controllers. The Robolions use Xbox controllers, Clayton said, because they're accurate and familiar to most students.

Unlike many of the students on the team, Clayton isn't planning to go on to an engineering program when he graduates. He wants study broadcast journalism. He likes working with cameras and video software, he said, and has even shot many of the team's videos.

Senior Daniel Gibson, on the other hand, dreams of one day being a software engineer. He's off to a good start as one of the team's programmers, working with computer languages like Java and C++ to get the robot to follow the driver's commands and win the game.

"It's something I've enjoyed learning and have fun working with," Daniel said. "It's been a good experience learning about robotics and being part of a team. It's a big time commitment during the competition season, but it teaches you how to manage your time well."

Freshman Mia Klohr hasn't been on the team long, but she's been participating in FIRST programs since first grade, working her way up from programming simple LEGO machines to full-fledged robots. She said she has always loved science and technology and one day hopes to go into a STEM field.

"The program offers a lot of really interesting opportunities," she said.

The students have named their robot Yoshi, after the 8-bit green dinosaur from the "Super Mario Bros." video game series, because it has green wheels and, like the Yoshi, it can pick things up and spit them back out.

The team is currently working against a deadline for this weekend's match. According to the program's rules, after Yoshi is repaired and ready for the match, it has to be locked into a plastic bag with a numbered tag. Students can't touch it again until it's time to compete.

Clayton said he's excited about this weekend's match, but even more excited about the chance to bring home a win from the world championship in April. Ranken Technical College has already offered to pay the team's fees to allow them to travel to Houston.

“Oh man! It would show that our high school and community produces top-notch student engineers," he said. "I think it would really show how hard we work. We spent two hours or more every day for six weeks straight, and sometimes five or six hours straight in the lab. We’ve earned it.”

Photos by J. Ryne Danielson/Patch