By Jackson Bain
After a tough match, Ruston High School student Biak Chin and her teammates were listening to the last part of the awards ceremony at the Bayou Regional Robotic Competition in Kenner, when one of the last announcements surprised the whole team.
“Well, first they presented two [rookie] awards… so I didn’t know that we were gonna get the Rookie All-Star. So, when they announced our name I was like, ‘what?’” Chin said. “When I went down, I was still like in disbelief and I looked at my sister and she said ‘We’re going!’ (to the world championship) And then she started tearing up.”
It was quite the moment for the Ruston High School Robotics Team. From a $6,000 NASA grant, to getting to compete against 600 teams and winning the All-Star Rookie Award in their first regional competition, then getting the amazing opportunity to go to the world championship in Houston, Texas, this week. It was all they could have hoped for and more, all in their first year.
Ruston High’s robotics team started in October, then in January they found out what the year’s game or challenge was that the robot needed to complete. The team had until the end of March to plan, build, and test their robot for their first competition. Every team in the world starts on the same six-wheel chassis, but from there they can add whatever they want – and add they did. A huge, rugged-looking mechanical arm is what allows their robot to pick up cones and cubes in different courses and score them on a grid with three different levels and at different heights. The robot uses a roboRIO as the brain and runs on JAVA. The robot is controlled by two Xbox controllers, one person controlling the movement of the robot and the other operating the claw, which proved to be the most challenging part of the robot.
“The claw… took a lot of effort for us and during the last competition we attended, the claw actually fell apart. So we had to fix it, but we didn’t have much time. That was the most difficult part,” RHS student Rachel Osatoyinbo said.
When the students were able to repeatedly repair the claw in the heat of the moment, that is what impressed one of the team’s advisors the most. Since then, the claw arm has been completely rebuilt and redesigned.
The team finished its its last preparations and left for the world championship this week, participating but unfortunately not winning at the World Championship, where 600 teams from across the globe, with every continent represented except for Antarctica, competed. And the Ruston Robotics Team got there in its first year However, spirits are still high on the team.
“I’m excited,” Chin said. “I never thought we would have this wonderful opportunity,”
