Lancer Robotics completed its 2014 robot, Kekoamekapuuwai or Kekoa, on Feb. 18. Kekoa’s full name means “warrior with heart,” in hopes that the robot will have the strength of a warrior and the heart symbolic of Sacred Hearts Academy.
The robot has a catapult system that can throw an approximately 2ft.-diameter exercise ball over the truss and into the high goal. Kekoa’s catapult system reaches 7’ 2” in height. It also has an intake system powered by two 22” motorized rods. The two rods have rubber gripping matter and they rotate in opposite directions to intake the ball.
Robotics adviser, Peter Park, said, “It (the build season) went well; it was a good team effort. There were multiple team mentors. I think we went in with a plan. We chose a simple design. I think everything went well, as efficiently as planned. The only setback for the build season was a custom-designed sprocket. We ended up hiring a machine shop to fabricate the custom parts. This year we decided to use custom-made parts for the crucial parts of the robot.”
Before the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) Hawaii Regional, Lancer Robotics will travel to the Utah Regionals at Maverik Center in West Valley City, Utah, from Mar. 11 to 16. Eight team members, including seniors Angela Wong, Dominique Dold and Lynse Chock, juniors Jessica Alyssa Manuel and Kristen Kate Tumacder, sophomore Michaela Graves, and freshmen Sydney Chock and Ji-Won Ha, will be traveling to Utah with mentors Brian Chock and robotics adviser Park.
Junior Jessica Manuel said, “I’m really excited about traveling to Utah. It’s been a while since our team has traveled to the mainland and since we were able to complete, test drive, and tweak the robot to function the way we wanted it to be, I’m anticipating that we will do well at the Utah and Hawaii regionals. Hopefully, we will be able to win some awards. I’m pretty confident that we will have an amazing season.”
Park said, “We expect to do well. I think we’re competitive and we’re going in there with confidence. We’ll do our best and have a good time.”
Team captain, senior Angela Wong, said, “All of us on the travel team are really excited to compete in the Utah Regional during spring break to showcase what our team has built over these six weeks. We are especially proud of our robot this year, and it’s exciting to pinpoint parts of the robot that we built. In Utah we will be competing against 48 other teams from the city, as well as teams from Colorado, California and Nevada. It will be an exciting competition, and we hope that we can represent the school well by doing our absolute best. Fingers crossed for good results!”
