LRIG SouthEast Chapter sponsors a local high school robotics club in the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship held in Houston April 11-13, 2003.

This national competition can be viewed on the NASA cable station

Friday April 11th from 3-7pm and Saturday April 12th from 7am-5pm.

See pictures of the BEAST below!

The FIRST Robotics Team # 587 is a group of high school students from Orange High School and Cedar Ridge High School that are interested in robotics. Orange High School and Cedar Ridge High School are two high schools of the Orange County School System. The team has had twenty to thirty students in it during each of the three years of the club's existence. After placing 2nd in the US FIRST VCU/NASA Langley Regional Robotics Competition in Richmond, VA earlier this year, the club will take nine students to Houston, TX for the nationals. In addition to the clubs 2nd place finish in the regionals, they were awarded the distinguished GM Industrial Design award. The award statement said: "This team made effective and efficient use of sound engineering design principles. Their use of alternative materials allowed them to withstand the rigors of competition. Their greatest strength is simplicity derived from two high schools."

Nina Daye and Lisa Seidensticker are the team advisors. Both are science teachers at Orange High School. Although neither is really trained in robotics, they seek to provide students with challenging, real world experiences to see that science and technology are extremely useful in life. In addition, they seek to provide students with experiences beyond the regular classroom.

Ken Boone is the clubs robotics expert. He has built his own robots and competed successfully in various robotic competitions including one that involves fire-fighting robots. He has his own organization and website called Ken's Robots. Ken does not have a student at OHS, he became involved with the through Duke University and Dr. Gary Ybarra, assistant dean of the School of Engineering.

The competition is the FIRST Robotics Competition and US FIRST and other groups sponsor the competition. Please see the usfirst.org website for more of the national sponsors. The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competition was started by Dean Kamen eleven years ago to provide a "super bowl" atmosphere that celebrated engineering, science and technology. They keep a very detailed website about the game, the kit, their goals and rules of the game. It is www.unfirst.org. 

NASA provides grants to help teams start in the competition. These $6,000.00 rants are available for the first two years of the competition. NASA sponsors several of the regional competitions, but the controlling organization is US FIRST. The team learns what the game is for that year and gets the kit for that year the first weekend in January. The team designs and builds a robot to accomplish the desired task in six weeks. There is a mandatory shipping date that has to be observed. The kit contains various motors, gears, springs, solenoids, controllers, fuses, and several sensors.  There are pneumatic components available as well. The control board is from Innovation first and allows the students to write several program modifications.

There are several other competition areas in addition to the robot construction. One of them is an animation contest. The team members use Autodesk's 3ds max to create a 30 second "infomercial on what FIRST means to them.

The chairman's award is the highest award from FIRST. This award describes and records the on-going relationship the student team members have with the mentors, engineers and other adult team members. The team is supposed to document as well how the whole school and community are impacted by the FIRST experience. This year the regional competition in Richmond, VA included a fifteen-second autonomous period at the start of the two-minute competition rounds. The OHS/CRHS robot excelled in the autonomous part of the competition. The teams student programmer (Ian) and Ken each helped at least ten other teams with their autonomous programs at the Richmond competition.

This year's robot, Occam 3, looks like a small black box with wheels. The clear lexan provides the ability to look in and be able to see all of the working components of the robot. Take out a few screws and you can reach the components to do any repairs too. It has four-wheel drive that is powered by two half-inch drill motors, one on either side.  These motors provide Occam 3 with all of the pushing power that it needs. This year's game gives each team twenty-five points for each robot that is on top of the ramp. The top of the ramp is a slick polymer, material, while the ramp is a one-inch copper wire grid and the floor of the competition field is carpet. Therefore, traction and control are very important. The 10 in "skyway wheels" provide the traction to go with that power. The body of the robot is entirely made out of wood. This provides it with shock absorbing sides that are light, inexpensive, and easily replaced.

In the Richmond Regional Competition during the autonomous period, OCCAM 3 came out of it's starting area quickly, stopped, changed directions, went up the ramp and knocked down boxes from the wall. The boxes in this year's game are the big blue plastic "Sterite" storage boxes like you get a Wal-Mart. It did this quickly and precisely. Occam 3 is very maneuverable, quick and tough. In head-to-head battles, it defended its' space against other robots. The OHS/CRHS Team successfully kept other teams from knocking down our stacks of boxes. These stacks are multipliers in the game scoring. The competitions are web cast on the NASA channel and on the first website. You should be able to see the Houston competition on the web or on the NASA cable station.

Please tune into the NASA channel to see OCCAM3: "The Beast" (Beating Every Adversary with Superior Technology).

LRIG SouthEast Chapter congratulates the Orange HS/Cedar Ridge HS Robotics Club for their past success and wishes them good luck in the FIRST Robotics Competition Championship in Houston!

Send mail to Scott Depee with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 1999 Laboratory Robotics Interest Group SouthEast Chapter. Last modified: 05/20/2008