The Sacred Hearts Academy robotics team has begun to prepare for the First Robotics Competition (FRC) in March. This year the game is called “Rebound Rumble.”
FRC teams have only six weeks to plan, build and finish the robot. Kickoff was on Jan. 7 at McKinley High School. “Rebound Rumble” is a basketball game, for which competing teams build robots that can shoot basketballs into hoops to earn points.
Sophomore Dominique Dold said, “They give us a kit of parts with motors, chains and the game pieces including a foam basketball for us to practice. We also got a Kinect, which was introduced to the game this year.”
The Xbox Kinect, a popular motion-sensory game controller, was introduced to the First Robotics Competition this year. Teams will be using it to control the robots in the competition.
“Instead of the normal programming period, one team per alliance is allowed to use a Kinect during the programming period as a hybrid,” junior Alexis Fraga said. “We program to Kinect before the competition, and during the competition we use hand motions to activate it.”
The team is busy building the robot before its first competition in Oregon at the Autodesk Oregon Regional Mar. 8-10.
“The Design & Build team has been working every day after school and on weekends fabricating parts to put the base together (bearing, brackets, gears, and motors) and designing the appendages (arm with gripper, hopper, and launch mechanism) to retrieve, collect and shoot sponge basketballs,” adviser Chelsea Harder said.
“We hope to make a strong impression on the other teams because we are an all-girls’ robotics team when most of the teams are male-dominated,” senior Connie Wu said. “We also want to build strong relationships with other teams there.”
After the Oregon regional, the team will prepare for the Hawaii Regional on Mar. 23-24.
Senior Lindsay Sanborn said, “At Hawaii Regionals I hope to win an award and qualify for the world championship. To do so, teams must either be on the winning team or win the Chairman or Engineering Inspiration award. We won the Engineering Inspiration award last year.”
