Newton robotics team heading to nationals in Atlanta

While there are many evil robots, like HAL from “2001” or the
Terminiator-battling T-1000, the robot built by Newton high schoolers
definitely qualifies as a force for good.

At their first FIRST Robotics competition, a regional tournament in
Boston last weekend, the Newton Ligerbots and their automaton collected
the Highest Rookie Seed trophy for best score by a new team and the
Rookie All Star Trophy for best new team overall. The performance
earned them an invite to the competition finals in Atlanta next month.
The team is also competing in another regional tournament in Hartford
in two weeks.

About 50 students from North and South worked on the project over
the last five months, said head coach Charles Hurwitz, the science
department head at Newton South. And the team is only going to get
bigger, he said.

“There’s already an indication that more kids will be involved for next year,” Hurwitz said.

While Newton students built a competitive robot last year under the
guidance of the Northeastern University robotics team, this year was
their first time participating in the For Inspiration and Recognition
of Science and Technology competition. The team had six weeks to design
and build a robot that could complete specific tasks — in this case,
grabbing balls off the floor and placing them in other robots’ trailers
while avoiding their attempts to deposit their own balls.

The Ligerbots’ machine uses a brush to gather the balls and an
Archimedean screw to suck them up off the ground into a container. When
the container is full, the robot drives over to a competing bot and
empties it into that trailer.

The project brought together students of all technical backgrounds —
electrical engineers met software engineers who met mechanical
engineers, Hurwitz said. And they in turn worked with students who
managed other aspects of the team — getting corporate sponsorship,
designing logos and graphics and documenting the process.

“One student came in wanting to take photographs of the robot — I
don’t think there’s a part of that robot that doesn’t have a picture of
it,” Hurwitz said.

The team is still trying to figure out how many members it can send
to the Atlanta competition and how to fundraise for the trip, according
to coach Phil Golando, an administrative technology specialist at
Newton North.

Newton Tab, April 17th via http://www.wickedlocal.com/