When we first joined our High School’s robotics club, we were scared little freshmen in a big, new school. We had heard a lot about the club, and how the teams had gone to the World Championships for the last four years. To be honest, it was rather intimidating because of their success and the fact that the club was composed of mostly boys. On the first day there, my friend, Kate, and I, were split up into two different teams, and I was a bit disappointed. I didn’t know anyone else. Of course, as freshmen, we really couldn’t complain. We were just glad that we were able to take part in such a cool club. After a day or two, though, the two of us were put back into one team, and it soon became clear that we worked really well together. One of the coaches gave us a few directions on where to get started. After a few days, we had a little robot base to drive around! It was so exciting to see what we had made, even if it was small compared to the large, six-bar lift robot that one of the other teams had. This was only a few months ago, and since then many things have changed. We, two freshmen girls, of team 5106C have been strong contributors to the Kennett Coders’ club, with the addition of our robot, ‘Checkmate’. We have achieved more than we could ever have imagined, but I still think a lot about how we were on that first day. We were just rookies. We didn’t have a set “job” in the team as neither of us knew how to program in RobotC and we didn’t know how any of the competitions worked, and most importantly, we didn’t have a robot. The two of us have changed so much as we have created a more efficient design for Checkmate. Our journey into the world of robotics began with small steps before we entered high school. In the summer between sixth and seventh grade, Kate went to a Lego Mindstorm NXT camp, where she learned about autonomous programming. A year after, I also went to that same camp, but they had upgraded to the VEX IQ bots. During that week, I learned how to drive a robot and learned a little bit about programming in a graphical interface. These camps introduced us to the High School’s robotics club and motivated us to join it once we were old enough to. It was the beginning of a robotics career for the both of us that would both solidify our friendship and our understanding of the technical aspects of robots. During eighth grade, we became some of the first members of the Kennett Middle School Robotics club. This might sound grandiose, but I need to say that there were only about six people in it. The teacher who was supervising us was also learning how this all worked. It was a small start, but we were given a room, some time, and some VEX IQ robot kits and we had lots of fun. We were able to learn the basics of how you would build a basic program and had actually constructed a sort of “scouting” robot that would go through the halls. If it hit anything, it would back up, turn, and keep going. We had a lot of fun with it, but we hadn't yet learned much about the coding or building of it. We followed the directions in the book for the design, and the program was all done with the graphical interface of RobotC, so it wasn’t until we joined the Kennett Coders that we really learned to build our own designs and code a whole program ourselves. In high school, we started with a very simple robot. We had spent a while making a base with wheels, a cortex, and just a couple of motors. We were super excited when we were first able to drive it around. We had actually constructed the robot ourselves and it worked! As we kept adding to the design, and improved what we already had, we started to see the logic behind it. Kate, especially, had a knack for figuring out how certain things should go together. An arm was attached to the back of the base, and at the end of that arm, a claw was attached. Now, our robot could drive around, pick things up, and score some points over the wall. With this, we started working on the autonomous portion of the program. This was a really difficult task that required a great deal of trial and error. Our coaches told us to keep on working at it, and we spent a lot of time making it work properly. We didn't understand why it was so important, but we later found out in the first competition.... With the design in place, it was time to create a program that would be a bit more complex than just the power of the motor equaling the joystick values. While we had built robots before, albeit simple ones, the coding of the VEX robots was a lot higher level than we had ever dealt with. Learning RobotC was a lot like learning a different language; it took time and effort to make a cohesive program with all the right syntax and functions. Every day in robotics, we are faced with some kind of challenge or problem. Whether it’s set by the coaches as a goal, or an actual problem that needs to be fixed on our robot, we try to troubleshoot our way to the end. We really enjoy the process of finding the source of the problem. Eventually, we settled into our team “roles.” Kate became the main robot builder, while I worked on the code. These roles are not set in stone, as we always help each other with the building and the code and work together to solve problems. Whenever we did something new, we would try to explain it to each other in order for us to understand all the functionalities of the robot. For such a small team, we were lucky to have been able to work so smoothly together. In our very first competition, we were kind of just thrown into matches, not really sure what to do. We just pieced together what we could and rolled with the punches. Everything went so fast. We somehow finished fifth in the qualifiers, and even made it to the semi-finals. At the time, our robot was one of the few who could highhang, an ability we were only able to pull off in our last qualifying match. One major flaw our robot had was that, if Checkmate fell, she could not get up, no matter how hard we tried. Unfortunately, that's what happened during the semi-finals. Still, we were so excited that we had been able to get that far, especially as we were one of the few all girl teams in a sea of boys. In our second competition a week later, we started to really think of strategies for after the qualification matches. Since we had been in the first five for the whole day, we figured that we would probably have to pick some robots for our alliance. It was very hard for us to pick, but we picked well and we got to the semi-finals again! We also made friends with the people we picked, and we worked really well together. While we hadn't won the tournament, we certainly made a name for ourselves around the teams. We learned a lot in the first and second competitions. Most of the other robots didn't have an autonomous, and this gave us a huge advantage. At this point, we had won the Judges' Award twice, and we were determined to go farther in the championships. The third competition was our best and most important one. There were two divisions: the cube division, and the star division. We were in the star division, and there were about twenty to thirty robots. We had been given a long stretch of time between the first two competitions, and had worked a lot more on coding the robot to be more efficient. We ended up coming in first in our division. Many teams came up to us and asked whether we were still looking for alliance members, but we already had our eyes set on a team we knew we would work well with. We went into the championships ready for whatever was to come. In the first two competitions, our team had been unsuccessful in getting qualified for the State Championships. That changed during the last couple of matches of this particular competition. We had done well throughout the day, and remained undefeated until the very end, where we became tournament champions. This gave us the ticket to go to the State Championships. We were ecstatic! In our very first year of VEX robotics, we were going to go to States! To top it all off, we were also given the Excellence award for our division. At the end of that day, we were so happy with everything that had happened. We were able to go so far with people we really connected with and thought of as friends, and went undefeated until the very end. If things had gone a little too well during the third competition, the fourth competition was a taste of challenge and presented a number of failures we needed to overcome. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. We had connection issues, our motors were stalling, and we lost a lot of matches that day. There were problems in the software and hardware that we just could not fix at the event. People could see that we were just not doing well. It was a frustrating day, but we stayed focused on what we could do to improve the robot as well as support our teammates. That’s probably why we won the Judge’s Award that day. We were very passionate about our robot, and in the face of adversity, we didn’t give up. Good sportsmanship is very important to us, so we celebrated the wins of the other teams and made plans on how we would move forward in the next competitions. We had a good, long break between competitions, and it felt like a breath of fresh air. Despite the last competition, we put a positive spin on things. We decided to rebuild most of the arm, and to make the lift more efficient, as well as clean up the code. Instead of a four-motor lift with all the weight of the arm resting on gears that were stripped beyond repair, we made a six-motor lift. In Conclusion Checkmate and the rest of 5106C have only been in the VEX Competition world for only a few months, but we know that we're going to be around for a while. As the robot continues to evolve and grow, so will we. We've made some friends along the way, and for me, this has confirmed my interest in engineering and coding. Robotics has truly affected our lives, and has become an integral part of our weekly routine. For me, I love working on the software and code end of things. I'd like to go on to be a software engineer of some kind. I have a passion for math and science, and working with Checkmate has really helped me see the mechanical side of that. Before, I only really knew about the theoretical. For Kate, she is the mechanical talent of our team and I think she would make an outstanding engineer. I could see her as an engineer designing the next big space Rover. These competitions have given us the confidence to know that we can succeed in any field. It can be a lot of hard work, but we know that persistence pays off. Working with robotics has helped us to see that a great deal of opportunity lies before us and it is up to us to reach out and embrace it. Our story isn't over yet. It has only just begun. Credits Entrants: Chani Mores and Kate Keefe Team: 5106C Robot: Checkmate Name of Storybook: And Checkmate! Paged Defined PDF Version
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Vex Competion:
Starstruck 2016/2017 Team Members: Our names are Chani Mores and Kate Keefe and we are the Girl Powered Team, 5106C. Robot Name: Checkmate / 5106C Vex Robotics Club: Kennett Coders School: Kennett High School in North Conway, New Hampshire Coaches: Mr. Ron Sandstrom Mr. Kevin Richardi Mr. Joe Riddensdale |